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Transcript:
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. This is our second episode in our deep dive into Joseph’s polygamy. And um I had the great privilege of sitting down with Todd Compton, who is the author of in Sacred Loneliness and really just an eminent scholar and historian in this topic. So I hope you enjoy our discussion. Welcome to this special edition of a 132 Problems. I am so pleased to be here with Todd Compton who has so generously agreed to come and talk to me. And um so for those of you who don’t know Todd Compton, I’ve done my best to put an introduction together and as always, go ahead and correct anything. I’ve gotten wrong. So you don’t get very far into the study of Mormon polygamy without knowing who Doctor Todd Compton is. He, is a groundbreaking historian who wrote what I believe is considered to be the definitive work on the wives of Joseph Smith. I have it here in sacred loneliness, this big book and it is an award winning book. It won many awards and I believe it’s still in print after 25 years and continues to be the most central and relevant resource on Joseph’s polygamy. So this is a must, a must read. And then um quickly, this is my understanding is Todd, I believe you grew up in Provo and attended BYU where he says he fell in love with ancient history and classics. Greek and Latin due in large part to taking classes from Hugh Nibley. Do I have that? Right? And um, OK. And he also began studying Mormon history and um wrote and presented in that genre. And after graduation from BYU, he attended UCL A where he earned a phd in classics and where much, much of his focus was on studying women from ancient history, which I think is very interesting and quite fantastic actually. And then my understanding is that to your surprise, you were awarded a fellowship to study the Eliza R Snow Diaries at the Huntington Library in California, which um let’s see which and then in doing that because of the struggle to identify the various women, you took a deep dive into the women of early Mormonism, which then led to the publication eventually of in sacred loneliness, focused more on Joseph’s wives and then in sacred loneliness. So since then, Todd has continued to study and write just I couldn’t count how many journal articles and papers and publications he’s written, I believe at least two more award winning books, a widow’s tale about Helen Mar Kimball and um, a Helen Mark Kimball Whitney and a frontier life about Jacob Jacob Hamblin and just last year published this new book, which is in sacred lowliness, the documents which I, I’ve had so much fun producing this. I haven’t been able to get into it yet. I need your books to be on audio version. We were, I were just talking but he prefers to read and I prefer to listen. And so, um because I’m always doing so many things, but I’ve had a lot of fun looking into this and it looks to me it’s uh it’s just a collection
[03:30] Todd Compton: has started to do a um audio version of this and I’ve actually, I recorded the introduction. So.
[03:39] Michelle: Oh, good. That’s great. If you need any women to record any of the readings, I volunteer. Let me know. But um it’s just a collection of the writings of women, of the women that are discussed in sacred loneliness, the wives of Joseph Smith. So I believe that’s that I have that. Right. Right. Some extensive journal entries and autobiographies. And so is I’m excited to continue to dive into this. So I couldn’t find much information on your family. I believe you have two Children and you’re active, you can tell me a little bit. Ok. Married with two kids. Both adults. Are you are your grandpa yet
[04:19] Todd Compton: in high school? Oh,
[04:21] Michelle: great.
[04:22] Todd Compton: I married late and so Um, I’m, I’m retiring age but I keep working. I work at a law firm and ok, and, and
[04:35] Michelle: staying busy with kids,
[04:37] Todd Compton: there are good things about marrying light and there’s challenges about marrying light. So, how old were you when you got married?
[04:45] Michelle: I got married young. I desperately wanted to go on a mission but alas got married at 20 and then I had four kids in three years. So we had, I had four kids in diapers together, two little boys, 18 months apart, and twin girls 18 months later. So, and continued on from there.
[05:03] Todd Compton: I cannot imagine it. That’s great that you’ve done that.
[05:07] Michelle: So different, different life path for sure. But I appreciate you updating me and, um, and, um, letting me know what your, your life is about now, I assume you are still working in history. I, I mean, I know you just did this book. Do you have any other project you’re working on right now?
[05:25] Todd Compton: I’ve kind of been doing spinoffs from the Jacob Hamlin book. I got really interested in Southern Utah history and Arizona history. And, and so you’re descended from a call. So you have a lot of Southern Utah history too, don’t you?
[05:41] Michelle: Yes. And I actually wanted to say that I wanted to say so this is more on a personal note. Um, just when I reached out to Todd, he responded and I just have to say I, I Todd, you just, he strikes me as just extremely kind, humble, forthright and frankly brilliant. I, I feel like, you know, everything and you keep it straight. I really struggle with names. I can’t even remember people’s names that I’ve known forever. So hearing you just rattle off all of these names is amazing to me.
[06:12] Todd Compton: And I go with names too. Oh, do you?
[06:15] Michelle: Ok. Well, that makes me feel a little better or maybe worse because you’re so good at it. I feel like I’m always looking up going, wait, which Orson, which Eliza, you know, I could get a little,
[06:26] Todd Compton: you told that story about, um, which call was it? See
[06:31] Michelle: it? Yeah, that’s what I, no, um, um, it was, see, I just because we’re talking, um, Ann Mariah call and Anne Mariah Bowen was an her husband. Well, no, it was, um, it was Anson call and their son was Anson phone call. So I actually, yeah, I wanted to tell everybody when I reached. Yeah. Well, well, when I reached out that you responded and let me know that you knew about my great, great, great grandmother. And which, I mean, how amazing is that to reach out to someone to request an interview? And he’s like, by the way, I know about your great, great, great grandmother. It was the coolest thing. And I did want to talk to you about her
[07:15] Todd Compton: a, as I told you, someone had told me that story and it did really impressed me. Um, and so, but I’d never, I thought, you know, I ought to document that sometime. And, um, so it was really great to actually hear the story from a descendant and to know, oh, this is a real story. But it was, and so Anson call, I guess divorced. It was your great, great grandmother. And then my friend who was working on Anson call and call side, he said, and I said, what, what happened to the kids? And he said, oh, he just farmed the kids out to the other wives, you know, and it made me realize how tough divorce might be in polygamy, you know, like people kind of think, oh, Brigham Young was so liberal about divorce, but it was really hard because often the men wound up with the kids. So anyway, so you told the story in great detail, you know. And so it was great to hear that.
[08:15] Michelle: Yeah, and I wanted to go over it really quickly because I found out a little new piece and I wanted to know if you knew any more. So just to recap, she, she crossed the planes and drove a nt she was, her father died and she crossed the planes at 15 and drove the team of oxen for her sister. She, I mean, she was, she was this amazing, amazing girl at 17. She was sitting at conference and Brigham Young, like you know, said Anson take her. So she was married off to Anson who was 40 with his wife and she was 17, she homesteaded everywhere anyway. She had six Children and her two oldest daughters died. She had a son in between them. And then at that point, Anson divorced her. So she didn’t even get a say, he divorced her and kicked her out and kept the Children and she was allowed to take her bait her infant girl. And, um, and I, this is the part I learned that I didn’t know when her little baby girl, her name was, I believe Harriet. I hope I have that right. Um, when she was five or six, that oldest son was sent by Anson to get the little girl and bring her back. So even that youngest girl, the story is that the wagon ride all the way from Spanish Fort back to bountiful, that little girl just cried and cried and isn’t that tragic? So when she was old enough, they even take, it is brutal. And, but that oldest son is the one that brought his mother back when she was an old woman and destitute, he brought her back so she could at least live out her life. The rest of her life cared for her. So she, but at the same time, she had to go back among those women who had, you know, because it was the sister wives, apparently that turned her that, that convinced Anson to kick her out. So, isn’t that just a brutal story?
[10:06] Todd Compton: Brutal. Yeah,
[10:09] Michelle: I didn’t, the piece I learned is that they even took the six year old. So,
[10:13] Todd Compton: should we, should we Mormon should know that story better? So, we’ll have to think about some way to, you know? Good.
[10:21] Michelle: Ok. I agree. I’m doing my best
[10:23] Todd Compton: to fiction writer, a good historical fiction writer to write about that, that woman and I’m not one of those, but I’d be happy to write about her life, you know. So maybe we could collaborate on something. Yeah.
[10:38] Michelle: Ok. I will, I will take care of that any time. But, um, ok, so, so, yeah, that was a fun connection for me. Well, I mean, it always just breaks my heart when, you know, I think of her. But so that kind of gets us into this topic because, um, you obviously have studied, I, like, you know, this, this work on Joseph Smith’s wives. I’m kind of curious what got you interested in studying women because I, even one of the negative reviews I read of your book or, or a neutral review was basically like, who cares about the women? Do you know what I mean? That’s the only,
[11:14] Todd Compton: I’m sure they didn’t put it exactly like that. But,
[11:17] Michelle: well, it was basically like, I guess it’s, I guess it’s worthwhile if you’re interested in the women but who, you know, and so I’m, so I’m just curious to know because that seems to be too common of an attitude, especially back, you know, in, in the histo history. So, what got you interested in studying women? Was it just that it was kind of like the new snow that hadn’t been stomped all through yet and, you know, it was a new area or did you have a reason?
[11:45] Todd Compton: You know, I grew up in a family with really good strong women, both my sisters and my mom. And, um, when I was at UCL A II, I had, um, friends who were graduate students like me in classics and they were really interested in women’s studies and, um, I got to know them and then I, you know, they told me books they liked and we just exchanged interests and so I started getting interested and, you know, women in the ancient world, you know, and like that transferred to women in Mormonism. But I just remember one day there were two of the women who I didn’t know very well who were gonna move. I said, oh, I’ll come help. So I went and I helped them move and carried boxes around, you know, which is such a typical Mormon thing to do. Isn’t that elder scorm thing to do? And, um, and I think as a result of that we became really good friends because they were really liberal and they probably wouldn’t have been interested in a close friendship with a Mormon. You know, even though they found out that I was kind of, I was kind of liberal too anyway. So I, I, there were, I, I think of two people in my graduate program and, uh, Leslie and Martha who kind of got me interested in reading, reading some books and, and, um, there were some, you know, UCL, a, some really important feminist historians came and visited and I got to meet them and, and so that was kind of the, that was, you know, that actually fed into why I wrote in Sacred Loneliness because I had a friend in my, in the L A singles ward Janet. And uh she’s the one who suggested I apply to the Huntington to write about, write on the diaries of Eliza R Snow. And, um, this is I’ve kind of told the story in this book edited by Joe Geiser. I wrote an essay in here about how I came to write in sacred loneliness. So you can read in greater detail in that. But when Janet suggested that to me, she said, oh, you know, you have this interest in women in the ancient world. You, you, it might be nice for you to work on Eliza R Snow’s diaries too. And so I thought she was crazy. I had no background in Mormon studies, but I applied for the fellowship and to my great amazement, they gave me the photo and so they paid me for, you know, to go to the hunting this fabulous library gardens mixture. Kind of me to go there and do research. It’s so wonderful.
[15:04] Michelle: What a dream come true. That’s just amazing. That’s ok. So, thank you for sharing that. I, I, so I want to kind of set the groundwork on a couple of things first, before you started studying, um, before you went to the Huntington Library and started studying Eliza Snow’s journals. Um, what was your understanding of Joseph’s polygamy? Was it something you had thought about it? Was it just kind of axiomatic? Of course, Joseph was a polygamist or did you, did you question that at all or were you surprised by it?
[15:36] Todd Compton: Um, I hadn’t thought much about it or very seriously about it and I hadn’t, I hadn’t done any research in it, certainly. And I, I’ve always been interested in Mormon history. So, you know, I, I was reading my Quinn’s books and articles before I made the switch to doing it myself at the Huntington. And, you know, like my dad had Juanita Brooks Mountain Meadows Massacre on the shelves at home. And I loved going to Sunstone and going to the historical session. So I did like history and, um, but I had never focused on polygamy at all and I’d always accepted that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. Um, but I hadn’t really done any research in it or, um, ok.
[16:32] Michelle: So you came to the, to the diaries with the assumption that Joseph was a polygamist. Just kind of as a, like, like, like, that’s how you,
[16:40] Todd Compton: you know, I read, I read certain, you know, like, um, Richard Van Wagner, I think I’d read his book called Mormon Polygamy. What is it called? Mormon Polygamy?
[16:50] Michelle: A history, you
[16:51] Todd Compton: know, and he talks about Joseph Smith as a polygamist and, and I, you know, so it was something that I accepted that. Yeah.
[17:02] Michelle: Ok. That makes sense. So I kind of don’t have
[17:05] Todd Compton: a reason to reject it.
[17:08] Michelle: Ok. That’s, I think because, because I’m so as we talk, you know, I’m in this strange place where, when I started this, um, podcast, I really tended to believe, well, I mean, you know, it’s kind of this, this, we’re at a point where, of course Joseph was a polygamist and if you think that that’s questionable, you’re kind of crazy, you know, and that’s, and, and as I’ve progressed, I’ve, I’ve kind of shifted. So, so that’s what I kind of want to get into studying. I mean, discussing how we come to these assumptions and how we should approach the sources if, if that makes sense, you know, because I, so what I’m doing now is I’m wanting to talk to people who, um, like last week I spoke to Whitney Horning who wrote a book recently. Um, that’s, that’s saying Joseph wasn’t a polygamist. I want to talk to you and, you know, I kind of want to go back and forth. I’ve I’ve spoken to Brian Hales and I just kind of want people to present their, their evidence and their case so that listeners can understand the, you know, if there is a discussion to be had about this, if that makes sense. And so, um, so I, so this is my, like, kind of just, um, my amateur understanding of how we got to where we are in the history. So you can tell me if you are familiar with this or if you disagree, just kind of the work that’s been done on this topic of polygamy or the kind of how the church has gone on it. So from off the top of my head, I like, it seems like during the NAVOO era, we just had denials of polygamy, right? And then in 1852 the church asserted that we did have polygamy. It’s interesting because as I read through, I’ve read through several times that first conference and those early sermons. And there’s really not anything said about Joseph’s wives or Joseph’s polygamy that, I mean, there’s the claim that 132 came from Joseph, but there are no claims of anyone that was married to him in those early years. And then so, so my understanding, we have um Lucy Smith’s biography of Joseph, the early history that she wrote that Brigham Young didn’t like at all. That’s kind of the first biography of Joseph Smith. And then, um you know, so, and then we get the division between the R LDS and the LDS. And so in the 19 sixties, the R LDS missionary start coming out and that’s where we start getting the affidavits. Like that’s where we start having, um, the claim,
[19:34] Todd Compton: a long tradition in, in the restoration, restoration history of, you know, people denying that Joseph Smith was a polygamous. So there is a long tradition of that and even some of the break offs of the community of Christ or continue denying.
[19:52] Michelle: Yeah. Right. Right. That’s what I’m wanting to get into. And so it seems to me that when we get, when we start getting the, the claims of women that they were married to Joseph, it’s usually in response to some sort of pressure, you know, like the first claims I’m aware of, of women being married to Joseph were in the, in I believe, 69 that it was, what’s his name? Um Bachmann found, when is that his name? I’ll have to find it Bachman Del Bachmann that he, he was able to start bringing out some of those sources and I couldn’t find sources much. So that’s kind of what I want to ask. So anyway, we’ll get to it. So we had the, the R LDS missionaries coming out and then we had the temple lot case and that led to a lot of affidavits, both of those situations. Right? And then, and then we have, you know, 1890 1904 and polygamy supposedly overall my
[20:46] Todd Compton: really paradoxical that um because of the R LDS denials of Joseph Smith being a polygamist, that’s where we got a lot of our documentation. It was very, you know, because Joseph F Smith collected affidavits and um in the, in the temple lot case, we had actual plural wise of Joseph Smith who testified in that case and as well as other nuan so anyway, go ahead.
[21:21] Michelle: Yeah. So that’s what, so we start getting the claims of women’s women’s like testifying or saying they were Joseph’s wives because of this pushback, right? That because like I said, it wasn’t said before that in, in the early years of Utah polygamy that we don’t have claims. And so anyway, and then, and then I think that it all kind of becomes the dirty secret in the closet right after the, well, in the 19 twenties, as I think when it really was ended because that’s when the F LDS break off. I know my great grandparents were married in 1906. And so a and with permission of the president of the church, the president of the church actually told my great grandfather to take a second wife. So he went to Mexico. And um anyway, and so then
[22:07] Todd Compton: are you talking about,
[22:09] Michelle: well, well, so Anson Bowen Carl’s daughter um is my, is my great grandmother. Yes. So, yeah, Sears. Um my, my brain is doing something funny now, So I’ll, I’ll, I’ll get their names. But yes, his name was Sears and Aggie and I can’t think of. Uh huh. Yeah. And so I’m embarrassed that their names are slipping my mind
[22:35] Todd Compton: the period of post Manifesto polygamy. I’m just absolutely fascinated by it. So, and
[22:41] Michelle: have you looked into much of that?
[22:43] Todd Compton: I was, um, reading through Solemn Covenant by E Carmen Hardy, the late Great E Carmen Hardy. And he’s got an appendix where he just lists all the people who were involved in post manifesto polygamy. I was just reading through, I was just reading through that and there was my great, great grandfather who was the half brother of Joseph Hiram Grant, half brother of Hebrew J Grant. So I have a little post manifesto polygamy too.
[23:14] Michelle: Ok. So when we use the term, I’m confused about the term post manifesto polygamy because some people mean after 1890. So that’s why I started to say post post manifesto because like, like, so what do we mean? Do we mean after 1890 or after, after 1904?
[23:34] Todd Compton: Well, yeah, I think we mean after 1890 you know, but I guess there must be a different terminology for after 1904, maybe post after the manifesto.
[23:48] Michelle: Well, yeah, that’s what a post manifesto and post post, right? Like, because like, I feel like, well, 1906, that is scandalous and yet that’s, you know, they were always in very good standing, he served in all kinds of positions. So, like I said, the president of the church ordained it. Yeah. So, ok. So, anyway, so that, it is fascinating. Yeah, it’s fascinating. So then it all gets silenced and it’s kind of the dirty secret that we wish we didn’t have. And then Fon Brodie’s book comes out in 1945 which is kind of anti from, from a anti Mormon perspective, I believe. Right? And she lists, she has her list of Joseph Smith’s wives. And then I didn’t see anything else until Van Wagner’s book in 1986. And then your book in 1997 is that, do I have all of the sources? Is that correct? Yeah.
[24:40] Todd Compton: Daniel Bachmann before. Yeah, Wagner’s, he did
[24:44] Michelle: it but, but he didn’t write the book. He just transcribed the affidavits,
[24:48] Todd Compton: right? No, he did a, it’s a really an interesting story. He told it to me once. He, he was at BYU and he wanted to work on Joseph Smith’s plural marriages and they said no, that’s something you can’t work on it. And so he went away to a different.
[25:08] Michelle: So, so can I ask, did they say no? Because they were still kind of in the Joseph wasn’t a polygamist. We don’t have like it was just wanting to be kept in the under the rug. Is that
[25:17] Todd Compton: why I think they would? I agree that he was a polygamist. They just don’t want to get into the details into the nitty gritty of it. Um because there are some very difficult aspects of those of Joseph Smith.
[25:32] Michelle: And do you think they knew that at the time because,
[25:35] Todd Compton: well, you know, the church put so much emphasis on and you know, the monogamous family that I just think they, you know, yeah, everyone knows Brigham Young was a pilgrim. But let’s keep, you know, this monogamous um kind of atmosphere around Joseph Smith.
[25:58] Michelle: So let’s just leave it alone. We don’t want, OK.
[26:01] Todd Compton: And
[26:02] Michelle: um, OK, go ahead.
[26:03] Todd Compton: Anyway, Bachmann went to a non Mormon University. Uh where, where was it? It was back east. Some, I forget was Purdue. And so he did the master’s thesis under a non Mormon in, you know, in, in a non woman university. And um he did come back and work with the affidavits at, at, um you know, the church history library and they were just coming so you could, you know, coming open so you could read them. And so he did a great master’s thesis, but it’s kind of interesting. He didn’t want to let people know about his master’s thesis. He kind of had this idea that OK, I’ve written it, let’s, you know, let’s, let’s not have people read this and, but it was, you know, he did such a great job and it, it was so interesting that it was, it was one of these secret documents that people would make copies of and give to friends and, and, um, so, yeah, so I first read it when it was just a xerox document, but now you can get it on internet archive. I think, I think
[27:20] Michelle: it’s, what year did you read it? Do you remember? What year was it written? And what year did you read it?
[27:25] Todd Compton: No, I don’t, I don’t remember either of those.
[27:28] Michelle: Ok. Ok. I have that in 75 is when he did his transcriptions, but I didn’t know. OK, I will try to find it. Maybe you can send it to me if I can’t find it so I can link it below for anyone that’s interested. So, is your understanding that? Oh, go ahead. Oh, is that not? Is it still secret? OK.
[27:47] Todd Compton: Anyway, so, yeah, he did this wonderful master thesis but not at BYU. So that shows, you know, it was kind of like a taboo subject still.
[27:59] Michelle: And that was his reason for not wanting people to read it as well. Was he was like, he kind of shared the BYU perspective.
[28:05] Todd Compton: I think he kind of felt like it was he, he just didn’t want to, you know, and also whenever you deal with a problem issue like that, I think you kind of feel like, oh, well, you know, I don’t wanna disturb the brethren and um right. And I know when I was doing in sacred loneliness, I really thought deeply about this. Um Is this something that I want to write. Is this a, you know, is this the correct thing to do? And, um, you know, and I eventually decided to do it, of course. But it, it’s, it’s a serious decision if you, if you want to write about this issue. And
[28:52] Michelle: I definitely agree because I felt the same thing even in, you know, last year when I started the same issue is, you know, what, what am I doing it? Well, I mean, I, what could the repercussions be like? Were you worried at all of getting in trouble? Because I know f brody was excommunicated.
[29:11] Todd Compton: Well, you know,
[29:12] Michelle: did
[29:12] Todd Compton: you have any concern September 6th? And these are some really good friends of mine who were excommunicated. Like, actually I, I became better friends with them after they were excommunicated. I got to know them and um so Lavina Anderson and Toscano’s. Yeah, wonderful people. And so it was this atmosphere of, I realized it could happen. And um so that was just something I had to prepare for in face and see if it would happen and as it happened it didn’t occur. Um, so complex story, we’re going all over the place here.
[29:57] Michelle: Yeah, I, I really appreciate you. I’m curious to know how
[30:01] Todd Compton: you
[30:02] Michelle: are doing
[30:02] Todd Compton: this great, this great background of all, you know, the writing and, and attitudes to polygamy. So continue with that. I guess that’s where
[30:11] Michelle: we get that we’ll get back to that can, can I just stay on this little tangent for one second? I’m just curious how that, how that struck you, those excommunications, did that shake you up? Was that upsetting and troubling? That was a hard, scary time. I was too young to really be aware. But,
[30:29] Todd Compton: you know, I was, I was a liberal Mormon. I was somewhat, you know, I was active but I was liberal and I’ve, do
[30:40] Michelle: you mean politically liberal or
[30:42] Todd Compton: politically and religiously? You know, and I went to Sunstone, I really enjoyed going to Sunstone and reading dialogue and, and so on. And so this idea of people being excommunicated because they were liberal, which is basically what it looked like was going on. I didn’t feel like it was, you know, I, I was not happy about it and um so um it happened to fund brody and so, but fortunately it didn’t happen. And that’s another whole story. I’ve heard some rumors about what was going on behind the scenes in the church office building. But
[31:26] Michelle: yeah. So, um so you never though even were called in or did you face any pushback from leadership or did you have any touch and
[31:35] Todd Compton: go not for in sacred loneliness? Um At, at one point I gave a talk on women and priesthood in, in sandstone. And then I had a state president in Santa Monica who was concerned and called me in, but it never got to the point of of excommunication trial or anything like that. But every now and then he would bring up what I’d written about, you know, in sacred loneliness, but that wasn’t why I came in.
[32:11] Michelle: Ok. Well, thank you for sharing. I really appreciate that. And I’m so thankful that it didn’t have any negative repercussions because we need you in the church. So, ok. So anyway, continuing on. So, yeah, we had Van Wagener book and then your book. And then interestingly, I think kind of goes along with this is in, I don’t know how much you followed this, but in, you know, the R LDS always were um on the side of Joseph was not a polygamist until the eight, the 1983 Richard Howard Paper, Richard Howard was the R LDS um historian who
[32:46] Todd Compton: is great. This is great. You have dates like this. OK.
[32:50] Michelle: OK. Good. So he was the one that, that, that said, no, it looks like Joseph was a polygamist and the R LDS changed their stance. And interestingly that is now for a lot of LDS, people considered the strongest evidence. The strongest proof of Joseph’s polygamy is even the RL Diaz admitted, that’s what I, you know, I had said to me a lot. And so anyway, so then as a reaction to that, we got the prices books, the first one was published in 2000 volume two in 2014 and volume three in 2018, the Joseph fought polygamy series. And so, because, because when the R LDS came on the side of Joseph was a polygamist. There was a huge break off that, that caused a great schism. So, so are you with me? That’s kind of how we got where we are, right? Since then we’ve had more books, a lot more written. But up until that point, that was pretty much it. So, when you were writing there wasn’t very much.
[33:46] Todd Compton: Yeah, we had, you know, Bachmann’s thesis, which was a wonderful thesis and we had Richard Van Wagner’s Mormon History Mormon Polygamy. Um, and then we had the, you know, Fon Brody back in 1945.
[34:06] Michelle: Ok. So I’m curious, can I ask, did you, have you ever read, I assume you’ve read Fon Brody and Bachmann and Van Wagner. Did you read the prices books?
[34:15] Todd Compton: Um, uh I not, I, I bought their first book on Joseph Smith. What Joseph Smith was not a polygamist or something like that. Joseph Polygamy. Joseph Plumy. Yeah, I bought that and read in it. I didn’t read every word in it, but I was interested to see what, you know, what they were saying and what some of their arguments were. So, um, people R LDS, people tell me that, you know, there’s like a tradition of arguments and evidence in the R LDS church and the prices kind of build on that. And, um, so, uh I, I met them, I went to his, their little bookstore I met them and, um,
[35:05] Michelle: ok, so, ok, I’m gonna want to get into that a little bit more in a little while because I have some, um, questions about it. But yeah, I wanted to know. So, so that is the history we have. So I’m curious, um, let’s see. Ok, backing up a little bit. So 11 other thing I am told is like, there is no professionally accredited historian who doesn’t think Joseph was a polygamist, right? So I kind of want to get into the, like, like me now, some of the biggest claims of people who aren’t necessarily scholars themselves, but who want to say there’s no debate to be had Joseph was a polygamist period. And if you don’t believe that you’re basically a flat earther, you know, that’s kind of the argument that we have sometimes. So I, I wanted to ask about sort of the study of history. Like, can you tell us, um for just lay people reading sources? I think the world has shifted a bit now because it seems to me that historians in the past were the only ones who could get in and see the sources, right? And um but now where we can all have access, like, I think historians often are still the ones who find the sources, but then we can all access them. So I wanted to know, like, what do we need to know to think? Like a historian like, what training is there that, uh, I guess, I guess the bigger question, I’ll just kind of spell it out a little bit because it seems to me that there’s a tendency for historians to study sources and then to make their, um, sort of sometimes subjective assessment of them and then write the history in a factual way when some of it is subject to their interpretation of sources. Right. And then their history is considered the factual history, which is then quoted by later sources. That, right? And so we get further and further away from the sources and we get handed down the factual history where there might be room for interpretation in the original sources when we look at them. And so now that we all have access to the original sources, it feels to me like everybody’s interpretation is, you know, it can be discussed, there can be a lot of valid interpretation. So that’s, I guess my big question of is um a historian better equipped to interpret sources than a layperson. And if so how and why?
[37:28] Todd Compton: Well, um there’s some very, very smart lay people. And um so I, I, you know, I would never make a generalization about lay people, not being able to, to have good judgment. And um a lot of historians, a lot of Mormon historians didn’t start out as Mormon historians and they didn’t, you know, I didn’t get training in American history or in Mormon history. I got my training in um Latin and Greek, ancient Latin and Greek Hero, you know, some ancient, ancient history is really wonderful, like Herodotus and Thucydides. And so I, I took those classes about, you know, so, um but I didn’t have training in American history and, and in, in Mormon history and I really felt like I really had to read a lot to get more background than I’d had. And so, you know, I at, at the same time I was starting to transcribe these documents, I was trying to read all of the masterpieces of Mormon history to, to get a edu educational background. But I think that people can really become very well educated by just reading. Not n you know, you don’t have to go to school, you don’t have to go to graduate school. You can become very well educated by reading and reading carefully and, and um learning the basics of, of history. So, yeah, and I think uh Maureen Ursenbach Beecher who is like one of who there’s another story there, but I won’t tell that whole story. But um, she, she worked on Eliza R Snow Diaries and published a book and I was at the Huntington and we kind of helped each other while I was there. And because I was working on Eliza R Snow too, but she started out, she did not start out as a Mormon historian. She ended up teaching that, but she was I think she got all her training in English literature or something like that, you know, and you go into the history of historians and you have people, um, what is it? Was it the rosetta stone that was an amateur deciphered the rosetta stone? You know. So he found this primary document and he just read it carefully and he cracked it where no one else had done it. So I have a lot of respect for people who aren’t necessarily trained in history or trained in American history or, or Mormon history. Um OK. And so
[40:32] Michelle: you’re willing to engage in conversations.
[40:35] Todd Compton: Sure. Yeah. And um you find well educated, very intelligent historians and they both look at one document and they can have very different views of that document. And uh you know, and if you spend any time in academia, you find out that sometimes they, they get really bitterly angry at each other because they interpret things differently and that happens in science too. Um Sure. Yeah. For as, but as far as readers, it’s kind of hard because, you know, if you’re writing the book, you’re, you know, you’re going into the library and the archives and you’re reading the primary documents and if you’re reading a book, so there, you know, part of reading that book is OK, I have to trust that this guy is representing the documents correctly. And uh I think with some historians, you, you develop that trust and Um, but I think that it’s a really good thing for people to read the primary documents to the extent that they can and especially on controversial, you know, like there’s certain documents and passages and certain documents that are controversial. But have you heard of a document? I think it’s called Doctrine and Covenants 132. Yeah. Her whole podcast named after that. Anyway,
[42:17] Michelle: the title, the title Document of my podcast.
[42:20] Todd Compton: Anyway, people have big disagreements about passages in DNC 132 and,
[42:28] Michelle: well, and that’s what’s so useful because we just have it in our Doctrine and covenant. So it looks like, oh, this is our canonized scripture. We assume it just has come down to us as this clean book from the beginning of time, you know, the beginning of, and then when you start digging in and learning the history of it and that it appeared kind of out of nowhere in 1852. And, you know, like, like it gets a and, and that section 101, but like, they’re just, it, the complication and you start to learn, oh, there’s like, that’s when history starts to just get fascinating and addictive is when is when, I mean, it really is sort of, you need to put your detective hat on and go after these mysteries and, right. I’m sure, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m kind of, you know, I’ve only been doing well, I’ve been doing this for years, but more intensely, this last couple of years and it’s really fun. It’s, you know, like that’s what I’ve started to do is now I remember so when I was at BYU, I, um and I was determining what my major would be and I was thinking of maybe child development and I started taking my child development classes and this is a little bit of a sidetrack, but it’s kind of to the point and it was so frustrating to me because I just wanted to learn how Children develop, how do children’s brains develop. And instead I was learning about Page and Freud and you know, all of these different people and then I realized, oh, all we have are different people’s theories of how children’s brains develop. We don’t really know how Children develop, right? If that makes sense. And, and it was actually because all throughout high school, I was just told this is how it is and this is how it is rather than told, this is this person’s theory and this is this person’s theory. And actually, now I think that that was really, it was, it was actually really frustrating. It made me choose not to go into child development. But now I see, oh, that’s the best way to teach is all we have are people’s interpretation of things because when I read history books and it’s this is how it was, you, you know, I think there’s a tendency to just state things factually that really are subject to interpretation. And so I always now know to go find the original source and,
[44:35] Todd Compton: and historians develop their theory and their interpretation, um, from the primary documents. It isn’t like they just come up, come up with the theory out of nowhere. They come to the primary documents and then they, they, you know, come across some interpretation, but then they keep reading, keep, keep examining the primary documents. And then you say, oh, this part of my interpretation doesn’t fit with designer Diana Huntington, um, young diaries. And then so then you modify, you modify your interpretation and your theory. And so there’s this constant process of coming up with an interpretation from the documents, but then modifying that interpretation and sometimes you find a document that just shocks you. It’s like goes against everything in your theory. It’s like, oh, I’ve got, I’ve got to really redo my interpretation after this document and that’s both exciting and it’s like, oh, no, I’m gonna rewrite a whole chapter. Now,
[45:48] Michelle: did you have any of those when you were studying Joseph’s wives? Anything that really threw you for a loop?
[45:55] Todd Compton: Well, um, hi. Um I’d read Van Wagner, but as I say, I hadn’t read him as, as someone who’s doing research by myself. So, you know, you, when you’re not doing writing your own book, you, you read another book quickly and you may not, you may not read it more than once. So he talked about women marrying, um,
[46:26] Michelle: the polyandrous wedding marriages,
[46:28] Todd Compton: two husbands at the same time. And so when I started doing research on Joseph Smith’s, uh, plural wives, I got to this where I realized this was going on. And so I really felt like I had to collect all of the data I could to try to make generalizations on what was going on. And so, um, that’s what I did, but it came from looking at, at the, the primary data and working with the lives of these women really gave me insights that um other people hadn’t had, you know, like often people were focusing on Joseph Smith, right? Because I was working on these women and really looking at their diaries and autobiographies, it really allowed me to, to interpret, you know, this what we call polyandry in, in a lot more detail. So, but that was a cons that was a constant interest in oddity when I, when I worked on these wives like Zina Diantha Huntington, Jacob Smith Young, um who was a, who ended up as a general relief society president and that she was one of these, these wives and, and so it’s, it’s exciting to, to try to figure out what’s going on and there’s this detective element you’re talking about, but often you don’t know some of the details and you, you just wish you, you know, I wish I had a long autobiography by any one of these polyandrous plural wise or a, a long autobiography of one of the husbands, the first husbands. And, yeah,
[48:36] Michelle: there’s a long autobiography of Joseph Smith. That would
[48:40] Todd Compton: be great. There’s some writing about it like Zina left something about it and left diaries of NAVOO that help us understand it. And
[48:51] Michelle: Mary diaries in her diaries of NAVOO is there, is there are there things about her polyandrous marriages and her diaries of NAVOO that, that were, that were written in NAVOO while she was in NAVOO.
[49:05] Todd Compton: Ok. So that’s the interesting thing is it was she never referred to overtly to her marriage to Joseph Smith, but she talks about her marriage to Henry Jacobs and the story that has come down through the family and you know, through conservative historians is that she was married to Henry Jacobs and Henry Jacobs was just not suitable for her. And so then she married Joseph Smith and you kind of had this idea that she married Henry Jacobs. They, they divorced, he was not a good husband, they divorced and then she married Joseph Smith. And when I read her diaries, that isn’t, that isn’t what happened at all. You know, you, you reading her diaries and she’s talking about living, continuing to live with Henry Jacobs all through Nauvoo. And even when she married Brigham Young, she continued to look to, to live with Henry Jacobs and had two kids with Henry Jacobs And so, um
[50:10] Michelle: so if you read just her nau diaries, without the later, without, without the later, you would think she was just married to Henry Jacobs and they were just a regular couple, right? OK. That’s so this is, so this is one of my questions. So it seems to me that all of our understanding of Joseph’s plural wives comes from these later reminiscences, the affidavits, the, you know, we say that they’re diaries, but they’re usually like, we have nothing that was written in while Joseph was alive. These are all the later reminiscences and, and writings to their Children or writings to the church or affidavits. So do, do you know off the top of your head? What the earliest sources of some of, of one of Joseph Smith’s wives? Like, do we have anything from 1846 1847 or those 1869 sources? The earliest we have, what are the ear? What’s the earliest source we have claiming a wife of, you know, that, that tells us that Joseph had other wives.
[51:10] Todd Compton: Now, here’s something where I’m kind of uh a little bit of a historical heretic. And in, in recent years, people have really emphasized, OK, you have to use contemporary evidence like diaries, something in the newspaper, you know, and I, I in one sense, I totally agree that all of, you know, those diaries are absolutely wonderful. And if you’re, if you’re lucky enough to get a diary for one of these women. It’s, it’s just a wonderful event and it, a diary gives you so much insight. And however, I, I strongly believe that that what I call retrospective evidence is also, is also valid and really important. And yeah,
[52:05] Michelle: I agree. I’m not, I’m not trying to throw it out
[52:09] Todd Compton: right now. I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about. There are, there’s a movement among some historians to
[52:15] Michelle: sure I do think it’s fair to like, like to me, some of the, some of the things we weigh looking, listen to me speaking as a historian. But for me, some to we are things like when was this written? What were the possible motives like like John Bennett was contemporaneously talking about Joseph’s polygamy? But is he a reliable source because he was so motivated? Right. And so so I just, I guess I’m just asking in a sense of people being able to weigh
[52:48] Todd Compton: these are good questions you need to be asking
[52:51] Michelle: and OK, so, so that’s, do you know what the earliest sources are like? Like, is it the 18 9, 1869 sources? Is that the earliest we have?
[53:02] Todd Compton: Uh well, a lot of it came when, when Joseph F Smith, you know, when the R LDS missionaries came, Joseph F Smith said, OK, I’m gonna get affidavits. And so a lot of these women were living and they knew who they were. And so
[53:17] Michelle: uh so that is one of those are the earliest. OK. And you don’t know of anything earlier than that. That would be a claim of being a wife.
[53:28] Todd Compton: And there’s quite a few autobiographies. But I think they’re, you know, I don’t think they’re, well, like
[53:36] Michelle: Helen Mark Kimball’s was in the 18 nineties, I think. Or like, I think that I know of things later than that, but I haven’t found anything so
[53:46] Todd Compton: I was later. But remember what I say, there, there are certain really valid things about retrospective evidence and there’s certain rotations. And like if your daughter came into, you came into the room and said, mom, tell me about what, what it was like for you when you were in high school. So you tell her, you take an hour or something and you tell her some of your fond memories and, and you know, she’s writing it down, you know, it’s, it’s extremely valid, it’s extremely valuable. OK.
[54:29] Michelle: Yes, I agree. I think that it gets, I think it gets a little more complicated when we add the late date and the possible motivations. That’s where I think there is room for interpretation. For example, in um I was just talking about um Anne Mariah Bowen and her, that baby daughter, Harriet. I believe that’s her name. And in the history that was written of her, that retrospective history, it, it just basically says she grew up in a large family. She spent much of her early childhood in Spanish Fork. And at six she moved to bountiful and, you know, so very much it doesn’t want to say there was a divorce, there was this tragedy. Right? And so sometimes we also look at what, like, you know, whereas if we had Anne Mariah Bowen’s diary of that time, it would tell a very different story than the sort of. Right. And then, and then I do think that there is, um, when we look at like for me, when I look at the letters between Joseph and Emma and the things that were happening in Emma’s life and the, you know, the interactions between them that is um contemporaneous. And then I measure that against these claims later on and try to fit them in, you know, and I do know that really, it seems to me there was sort of an existential threat to Brigham Young and the other leaders to prove that Joseph was, was a polygamist with, with the R LDS, the Federal government breathing down their necks that, you know, and so, and I know that there were, we do have good sources of Hebrew C. Kimball’s wives or daughter in laws or daughters being told, you say what you’re supposed to say, we have Phoebe Woodruff saying I, I need so I think when we put all of that together it, for me, it, it makes me go, ok, these things need to be weighed out carefully or, or at least need to be investigated with an open mind if that makes sense.
[56:28] Todd Compton: Yeah. And throughout history that, you know, it’s, it’s obvious that people often are very egotistic and um see things from their own perspective and they don’t see the broader picture and they’re biased, they have political, strong political points of view or strong religious points of view. And these biases will be there in things they write and, um, and in family traditions, you know, we, we love our ancestors so much that we kind of, there’s this tendency to not, not tell the whole story if there’s problems. And so that’s so wonderful when you do run into a, an aunt or someone who will tell you the whole story, you know.
[57:22] Michelle: Right. Right. Yeah, I, yeah.
[57:26] Todd Compton: So, and I,
[57:28] Michelle: I actually, I did an episode recently because, um, Mark Hoffman is actually my cousin and um actually my mother’s first cousin. And so that’s definitely, you know, something that we don’t talk much about, you know, like I, I got a push back when I was going to do an episode on that because it’s the same kind of a thing. It’s don’t talk about that, you know. And, um, but, but I think no, it matters, it’s important, you know. And so, but I, I understand what you’re saying. So, ok, so my next question is, um, so, so we don’t have anything before about 1869. So I guess that means I guess that answers my next question, which is, we don’t have any records of like, like official church records of ceilings. Right? Like we have starting in, I think, I think that section 128 was, was, was it 1842? I believe that was like, we have to keep records, things aren’t sealed unless there’s a record. And so we have records starting about that date. Definitely by 44 of baptisms for the dead. And then, you know, and then 4445 we have records of ordinances, but I can’t find any records of ceilings again until much later in Utah. Do you know of anything I’m missing?
[58:46] Todd Compton: Well, we find a few things in diaries like in the, we should mention the William Clayton diaries.
[58:53] Michelle: Oh, right.
[58:54] Todd Compton: And he documents his, uh the marriage of Joseph Smith to Lucy Walker.
[59:00] Michelle: That’s only from the William Clayton diary. And, but we don’t have, we don’t have a record like, like there are official church records, you know that like Joseph called recorders and made official records. We don’t have anything like that of ceilings.
[59:15] Todd Compton: We have things like in the Joseph Smith diaries, we have a list of what, you know, like about eight of his plural wives and he, you know, and among them is Marinda Hyde, Marinda Johnson Hyde.
[59:29] Michelle: And wasn’t that added much later when the because, you know, you’ve seen the revisions like the quote of Joseph Smith saying Joseph Smith forbids it on this law and then there’s the cross out revision
[59:42] Todd Compton: and a lot of his diaries he dictated. And, um, so it’s like William Clayton writing for Joseph Smith. And so it’s like a mixture of Joseph Smith’s words and Clayton’s words and, but
[59:57] Michelle: words that were written at the time and things that were written later.
[1:00:00] Todd Compton: Ok. And I’d have to look at that list. We’d have to, it’s in the Joseph Smith papers now.
[1:00:06] Michelle: Ok. Ok. I will look that up. That’s good. So I’ll link that. So we have, we have some things from the Clayton Diaries, but we don’t have any church records of ceilings until later in the period.
[1:00:18] Todd Compton: You know, because, because this stuff is controversial, it’s possible that there are some church records that haven’t been released yet. Ok. You know, they’re in the church presidency’s vault or something like that. And so, um there might have been, someone might have, you know, Clayton might have kept a record of Joseph Smith’s plural wives and they said, ok, we’re going to keep that, we’re gonna keep that in the vault and it’s, it’s
[1:00:59] Michelle: ok. So there could theoretically be something that’s not released, but we don’t have anything that anyone has seen
[1:01:06] Todd Compton: because this is a subject that they have, you know, kind of tried to downplay through the years. So,
[1:01:13] Michelle: yeah, although it is interesting that they released the affidavits, they let those be read and they, you know. So they, so it, it’s, it’s, and we do have all of the, like, I think that all of the ceiling, I mean, not ceilings, all of the temple records from those early dates are available. Those are all open source. So we have access to all of them from the
[1:01:34] Todd Compton: NN
[1:01:36] Michelle: T. Right. Yeah. Right. Ok. Ok. So, um, so then do you know of any my next question and, and I’m just checking in with you because you are. So, you know, I’m, I’m a little more novice at all of the history stuff. I’ve gotten into the scriptures and the theology, but not the history quite as much as I would like to. But um I haven’t found any um supposed wives of Joseph Smith who, who didn’t come to Utah. So, like, like there are many of Joseph Smith’s wives who didn’t come to Utah, but none of them claimed themselves to be Joseph’s wives. It was always like, like all of the, how do I explain this? I’m not doing a good job. Only women in Utah claimed to be Joseph’s wives and anyone that didn’t come to Utah, if it was one of Joseph’s wives, it was a woman in Utah that said it, it wasn’t her that said it like does, does that, do you know of any women that didn’t come to Utah that themselves claim to be one of Joseph’s wives?
[1:02:35] Todd Compton: Well, I think one example is Sarah Lawrence who is really, you know, really well documented as marrying Joseph Smith and m, you know, multiple documents and she ended up in California. And I, I really think that some of these women, I, if they weren’t, you know, really, um, orthodox Mormons, I don’t think they would be interested in talking about their marriage to Joseph Smith. You know, Sarah Lawrence was just living in California. You know what that means back then. You know, it’s like if you were a good member of the church, you’re living in Utah. So,
[1:03:24] Michelle: right. Ok.
[1:03:26] Todd Compton: Um, so,
[1:03:28] Michelle: so all of the claims are from Utah.
[1:03:31] Todd Compton: Yeah. And Joseph F Smith was there in Salt Lake City, gathering the affidavits from anyone he could. And uh a lot, a lot of them were right there in Salt Lake City. Some of them were in other cities like Lehigh and so on and, but they would come to Salt Lake City and so his, yeah, his affidavits were people who he had to. And so,
[1:03:58] Michelle: so we don’t have other women and other places saying that they were married to Joseph, like, like it seems like Fanny Alger is an example, right? That, um we have, you know, the only evidence of her is the dirty, nasty scrape in the barn. What? You know, and she never claims to be Joseph’s wife when someone asks her what, you know what her relationship was. She says that’s just my, that’s nobody’s business, but ours Right. But mine, and then Emma didn’t come and she claimed that Joseph wasn’t a polygamist. So I guess that’s an interesting point to me too is the only women that were claiming that Joseph was a polygamist were in Utah. And, and that’s interesting to also consider,
[1:04:40] Todd Compton: and I think the people who were not active Mormons, active orthodox, faithful Mormons, they wouldn’t have been interested in talking about that whole subject, I think.
[1:04:53] Michelle: OK, that’s fair. So you, you’re so you think that, so, so can you see that there would be women who would marry Joseph Smith and then leave the church? Do you think they would be embarrassed about that or ashamed or just thought it would bring persecution on them? Is that why you think they wouldn’t talk about it?
[1:05:17] Todd Compton: And, you know, there’s a lot of Mormonism throughout America. And uh you know, and Fanny Alger is a good example. Um And she ended up not, she was not, you know, she was interested in, she was interested in. Um We’ve, this is since my book was published, we know she was interested in spiritualism and her husband was involved with masonry and, and uh but she wasn’t involved with Mormonism at all. And so OK, because she was surrounded by non Mormons and she was in that kind of environment, she wouldn’t go out of her way to emphasize her own Mormons.
[1:06:01] Michelle: Right. Right. It’s just, it’s interesting to me to think of like there’s a woman. Oh, I was just reading about her this morning. I want to say her name is Sarah. Another Sarah that stayed in Nauvoo. Her daughter Augusta came or am I am I? Is it? And, and she
[1:06:20] Todd Compton: Cleveland. Sarah Kingsley.
[1:06:22] Michelle: Yes. Thank you. See, you’re really good with names. Well, you wrote the book. You should be back but she, um she stayed and she, you know, it talks about, you talk about how she was such a good woman of faith. And so like a, like just a very religious, um, good woman. And, and so I guess what’s interesting to me is that these really good wom women who were able to step back into protestantism would have, um, this period where they were like, oh, ok, God has revealed this greatest commandment and I need to have, I need to marry and be sexually active with this other man. And then, ok, just kidding. That part of my life is over and now I’m just a really faithful spiritual protestant. It seems like such a, I, I can’t wrap my brain around that. I can’t, you know, I can’t put myself to where, like I know people say you’re insane to think that these women would lie about this. But for me, especially with the motivations at the time and the focus on the most important thing is defending the Kingdom of God and you know, and, and being counseled by their husbands who they were taught to look at as their lord and they, and to obey. It’s easier for me to wrap my brain around that than around these women jumping into bed with other. Do you know what I mean? With, with, with, with two men? Like it’s easier for me to who is Josephine’s mother? Um The one who claimed that her daughter was Joseph.
[1:07:54] Todd Compton: Uh What’s
[1:07:56] Michelle: her
[1:07:56] Todd Compton: name? Um So it’s um s Silvia Sessions. Sylvia
[1:08:03] Michelle: Sessions Lions. Yes. It’s easier for me to believe that she wanted to give this claim and knew it would help her daughter’s esteem in the community. It’s easier for me to believe that she told her daughter she was Joseph’s then that she was having sex with both husbands and didn’t know who she was. Does that like, like these were women of faith? So that’s why I struggle with rapping as a woman. Like that’s so that’s so bizarre to me. Does that make sense? That’s one reason that I, that I struggle with it. But
[1:08:40] Todd Compton: yeah, you know, and with, with history, you, you read, you read the evidence, you read the documents and often you s you know, in any kind of history you say, do I believe him when he says this? And sometimes there are good reasons not to believe, like you might have a flat contradiction from another document. And then you say, oh, which of these two do I believe? You know, and they’re both. What’s strange is often they both seem really trustworthy to you.
[1:09:13] Michelle: Right? Like, like Emma’s claims and these women’s claims, right? We have that problem there. Ok. And go ahead. I’m sorry.
[1:09:21] Todd Compton: And then you have to try to work it out somewhat and sometimes you can find another document that will help you understand the, the disagreement. So 11 of the is one of the things about being a historian is you have to just read all of the data. You have to cover all of the data relating to what you’re in, what you’re working on. And for me that meant going to different libraries, going to different archives and spending months taking
[1:09:55] Michelle: and this was pre internet. You had to do the card catalog, hard work.
[1:10:00] Todd Compton: Well, we we had the internet but it was kind of primitive internet. Now, a lot of primary documents are can be accessed from the church history library in internet archive. And, and, but you know, there’s this and it’s part of this detective element where you’ve got sometimes there’s a problem, you know, it’s like, I don’t know the birth date of this woman. I need the birthday. I don’t need the, I don’t have the date of when she married her second husband. I need that date, you know, and so you just, you’re read everything you can get that you, you read everything she wrote. But then you say, OK, I need to read her family So you read everything her brothers and sisters wrote. And, um, I just an example still when I was still at the Huntington, we have these two wonderful sisters. Um, Zina Diantha Huntington, Jacob Smith Young and Proscia Lathrop. Huntington Jewel Smith.
[1:11:14] Michelle: Right. I’ve heard you, we don’t give you enough credit because to keep track, to track down who all of these women’s women were when their names kept changing. Right.
[1:11:24] Todd Compton: Ok. So anyway, they were on my list. I said at the Huntington, I started making lists because there was no good documented, well documented up to date list of Joseph Smith Wise. And so these sisters were on my list. And then I found out at the Huntington they had vast, you know, long diaries starting in Nauvoo of her brother Oliver Huntington. And so I had, you know, the Huntington was paying me to come in and read. And so I just went, you know, put the microfilm on the microfilm reader and just sat there and read, read all day through the diaries of, um, all over Huntington. And I learned a lot about his sisters, but it was interesting to, to read his life, obviously also, he ended up in Springville. Uh, but that’s just an example of you, you try to read everything possible to, to give you background on, on these problem issues.
[1:12:29] Michelle: Yeah. Ok. Yeah.
[1:12:32] Todd Compton: How much time we’ve been talking about reading the primary document?
[1:12:37] Michelle: Yeah.
[1:12:38] Todd Compton: Ok. Now, in this book in sacred loneliness, the documents. So all of the documents I picked only things written by the women themselves. But as you mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of autobiographies, diaries and odd little genres. There’s interviews, um legal testimony, affidavits in, I’ve
[1:13:03] Michelle: actually had so much fun with it so far. It’s really, it’s really cool.
[1:13:09] Todd Compton: So all of this skepticism you’re talking about, it’s really good because you should be skeptical of any, any historian or any document. Like, one thing that happens is you read a quote in, in some book, you read a quote and you say, and it something, it’s like, oh, that’s a strange quote. And so then you go and you read like the, the document, it comes from, you read the paragraph in front of it and the paragraph after it and then it means something totally different than what the author said.
[1:13:53] Michelle: Right. Right.
[1:13:55] Todd Compton: So this is one of the ways that when you get the whole document, like you do in this book, you can read in it and read what’s before and what’s
[1:14:05] Michelle: after in context and in the,
[1:14:09] Todd Compton: yeah,
[1:14:09] Michelle: so valuable.
[1:14:11] Todd Compton: And then you can check and see if the historian is being honest, if you think he or she is being honest.
[1:14:19] Michelle: I think it’s an important book. I think this, uh, the second book you, I think it is important because, yeah, I’m really, and I hope, I hope you’re not feeling like I’m, um, like like, I, I don’t want you to feel like I’m in any way being critical or invalidating because I do so respect your work. So, II I guess I was just where you were, where you were just coming to it knowing that Joseph was a polygamist. So we, you know, and so now with a different perspective, it’s um like, I don’t think even if, even if there’s a different perspective of um were these actually Joseph’s wives or were these the women that claim to be Joseph’s wives? I don’t think it invalidates it at all. You know? I mean, you’re so like, I really appreciate you talking to me. I don’t want you to feel like I’m, I really hope you don’t feel like I’m OK. I just want to ask my hard questions if that’s OK. OK. Thank you. I, I should be skeptical
[1:15:14] Todd Compton: just like historians should be skeptical, you know, from a Greek word that just means way, look carefully.
[1:15:22] Michelle: Ok, we weigh it out, waith. And then, and I guess science can’t move forward if we don’t, if scientists don’t approach it with skepticism, saying can we move this forward? Right. And, and maybe the same is true for history. I think studying it out either gets us more convinced that they were his wives because we find further evidence or it opens up the discussion to consider things in a different way. Like, so, so I appreciate that. So, ok, I have a couple more questions if you’re ok. Are you all right to go a little longer? Ok. So, um, let’s see, I’m trying to prioritize. I have a lot more questions but I’ll go, I’ll just give you maybe three or four more one. I’m curious to know what you think of the gospel topic. Essays on polygamy. How do they like with your expertise and research? You know, I, I, I’ll confess I struggle with them. I, I don’t find, you know, I find them to be a kind of pretz awkward attempt at a, at trying to make it fit in. So I’m curious to know what your thoughts are unless that puts you in an uncomfortable situation, which is ok if you
[1:16:34] Todd Compton: don’t, it’s kind of like, um, it, it, yeah, I’m, I’m thinking of my views of, of Richard Bushman’s book. How he deals with polygamy. Rough stone rolling and, um, and Brian Hales, you know, he, we have disagreements on certain things, you know. And yet I’m really, really, really glad that they’ve done their work, you know, and they’ve done it from, you know, I’m fairly liberal and they’re more conservative though. They have liberal,
[1:17:10] Michelle: I think Brian is more conservative than,
[1:17:13] Todd Compton: yeah, I’m really glad that they, they did these essays but I have, I have disagreements with the ones about Joseph Smith’s polygamy and, um, you know, and at the same time that quotes my book that, you know, it quotes in sacred loneliness in the footnotes. And it’s like
[1:17:37] Michelle: the gospel topic, essays.
[1:17:40] Todd Compton: And I know how, how, um, how careful the LDS church is and they are very capable of not quoting books that they don’t work. And so I was really surprised that in one footnote they, they quoted my book and then they quoted Brian Hales a lot more than that because he, he actually helped with those. But I, um, so it’s like glass, half empty, glass, half full. You know, I’m, I’m really glad they did them and, um, but I, I have disagreements on, on certain elements in them.
[1:18:22] Michelle: So, do you want to expand on what those are or would you rather not?
[1:18:25] Todd Compton: No, or
[1:18:26] Michelle: just a quick overview,
[1:18:28] Todd Compton: Brian. And I, and again, I, I think we’ve talked about, we’ve covered about how Joseph Smith’s plural wives was like a taboo subject for many years. And, um, so I really admire how Brian coming from a fairly conservative background has instead of just saying, ok, we’re not gonna talk about this. It just totally dove into the whole subject added to the documentation, you know, I’ve learned things from his books and, um, so I, I really admire that and, um, you know, I, he’s helped me, I’ve helped him at, at times and at the, at the same time we have disagreements, one of our big disagreements is on these polyandrous wives. Uh, were they married for eternity or were they were they married for just eternity, which is his position or were they married for time and eternity, which is my position and time and eternity can include sexual relations also. And so that’s,
[1:19:43] Michelle: and we really don’t have any evidence to say, right? It’s just kind of trying to make it fit better and make sense to us to say it was just because there’s,
[1:19:53] Todd Compton: there’s, there’s evidence you can use on both sides. And, um I, I don’t find the evidence that he uses convincing, but so I, I just wrote an article on this and he has written extensively about it. So, and that was there in those, in that gospel topic, essay that
[1:20:19] Michelle: OK, so I have OK, I, I have a couple of more questions. These are the ones that are just kind of hitting right at it. So if that’s OK, I’m curious to know this is something I just ask everyone like, what do you think about polygamy? Do you believe it was ordained of God as the highest holiest principle necessary for our exaltation? And that it was a test for that time? And, and then God said not anymore. Do you think it was an error of men? Do you like? Can, can you see how polygamy would be from God? Do you believe that polygamy was ordained of God or that it was an error?
[1:20:59] Todd Compton: Ok. And again, I have to give some background that I’m very liberal. Um And part of my liberality is feeling that church leaders can be very, very human and make mistakes. And so, uh, uh, 11 of the things I’ve said in the past is if I were pinned down and forced to answer a question like this, um, I can, my position is kind of what Eugene England’s position is. And he wrote this essay on what is it called? Why monogamy is the order of heaven? And so,
[1:21:45] Michelle: oh, I haven’t read that. That sounds fabulous.
[1:21:48] Todd Compton: Yeah. And like a lot of people kind of say, um, ok, we’re good monogamous people here, but maybe there’ll be plugging me in the next life. And Eugene England totally rejects that. And he feels like marriage will be. There’s something about monogamy where you’re both entirely focused on each other and there’s kind of like an element of equality there too
[1:22:17] Michelle: and commitment and importance. Yeah.
[1:22:21] Todd Compton: And so I’m kind of, I kind of follow Eugene England. But there is because boy in the 18 hundreds, you know, from navoo to the end of the century, our church was strongly, strongly polygamous as, as you well know, from your family background. And it wasn’t just practicing polygamy though. They, you know, definitely really practiced polygamy. It was, it was part of the doctrine that you needed to be polygamous to enter the highest parts of, of heaven. And, um when it came time when there was a lot of political pressure on church leaders to give up polygamy. They were like, no, this is a revelation from heaven. We will never give it up. And so Gene England, obviously, he didn’t deal with that issue in detail because it’s really, really tough and because
[1:23:29] Michelle: they didn’t deal with which issue which, which issue
[1:23:33] Todd Compton: to practice polygamy to, to get the highest degree of,
[1:23:38] Michelle: oh, that the, the because because Brian Hills also denies that that was taught and, and I it was absolutely taught it, it like polygamy was actually the means of exaltation. Not only necessary, it was the means and, and absolutely taught that that was the reason for it. And so Eugene England also just kind of skirts that issue.
[1:24:01] Todd Compton: I just actually started research on that top, you know, and there’s a lot of complexity, there’s a lot of complexity. And I remember Mike Quinn was writing about this and he said, and so you have Brigham Young saying you needed to be polygamous to get to the highest exaltations and then elsewhere, he says, oh, no, a monogamist can get the highest salvation. And sometimes in the same talk, it seems like he’s taking both positions. It’s, it’s very odd. So there’s, there is complexity and, but I, I would say the, the most, the basic principle without the complexity was definitely they, they felt that they had to be polygamous to get the highest degrees of glory in the next life. And, and so there’s that, that is there in our doctrine. So it’s really hard to deal with that. Um And, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like where we have general th s really taste, tasteless racist things, you know, and you can find them saying those things and, um you know, and using bad interpretations of the Bible to defend racism and so on, it’s kind of the same thing with, with polygamy. Um and the, the doctrine of polygamy as it was taught because it would never have been practiced as much as it was if they didn’t have this strong sense that you needed polygamy to get the highest degree of glory. So in England didn’t deal with that in
[1:25:57] Michelle: sure. Well, and you know, it’s, it’s interesting to me because we have like Brigham Young taught quite a few things that we reject, you know, like the racial ban. Thankfully, we’ve rejected Adam God theory, blood atonement. Like we have a list of doctrines that we are just like nope. And, and to me adding polygamy to that list would be a really good thing to do. We like, we already have a list like, like we already have a precedent for saying, yeah, there were errors, there were interpretations that we don’t hold to. And, and so for me, it’s, it’s just a natural thing to just acknowledge what seems to be very obvious truth that polygamy belongs with those other, rejected bad ideas. And that’s my take on it that you
[1:26:47] Todd Compton: know, I remember I went to um when I was living in Los Angeles, there’s this, there was this wonderful series of meetings where they would invite historians to talk. Mormon historians. Wow, Miller Echoes Miller Echo. And I remember Linda King Newell came and this was before I was interested in polygamy, but she came and talked. And toward the end, she said, we need to dec canonize doctrine and covenants 132. And I was like, whoa, do you know how hard that would be Linda? And by the way, we left a Mormon enigma in our little, in our little survey of important polygamy books.
[1:27:33] Michelle: Oh, yeah. Well, actually, that’s
[1:27:36] Todd Compton: a very important
[1:27:38] Michelle: I should have, I should have included that. What was I thinking? It was actually my episode on Emma. I did an episode on Emma and Joseph and that, I mean, I already had had experiences with the Lord and Dreams and things telling me that Joseph was a monogamous that, you know, but I just was like, I need the evidence. I, I can’t, you know, I need the evidence and it was actually my episode on Emma and Joseph. That was kind of like, OK, OK, I cannot make sense of Joseph being a polygamist and Mormon enigma was one of my main sources. That’s an excellent, excellent book. And so I shouldn’t have left that off. Yeah. And so, so anyway, if you get a chance to watch that episode, you’ll see kind of how I shifted, you know, because
[1:28:22] Todd Compton: Emma, yeah, I was lucky enough to get to know Linda and Valle both. They’re wonderful people. And again in this book, there’s an article by uh Linda King Null about how she wrote, how she and Valle wrote Mormon Enigma. So I highly recommend that too.
[1:28:45] Michelle: Oh, that’s great. That’s good
[1:28:49] Todd Compton: that you’re talking about Emma. And,
[1:28:52] Michelle: yeah. So I have, I have a couple more questions if you’re OK. I um we, we skipped out of order. So this is stepping back a little bit. I just have two more questions. But so, OK, I’ve tried to tease out your way of like your criteria for determining a wife. And my understanding is is that if there’s a claim that there was a, a marriage, if there was a claim that there was a ceremony, then you consider them to be married. Do I have that? Right? And, and then even if someone else made the claim and like if there’s a claim that there was a ceremony and then, and then my understanding is that for you, a marriage means sexual relations. So you, you make the assumption that if they were married, they were involved together and, and those are, those are your measurements that you bring to it. I am I understanding that correctly?
[1:29:42] Todd Compton: Yes. But there’s a lot of complexity there. I mean, no, I, I think polygamous marriages were considered to be marriages, normal marriages in the sense that they were expecting to have kids, sexual relations and kids. And I think Joseph Smith was planning when he got out of NAVOO and um work things out with Emma. He was planning to have more open um marriages with, with these women. And of course he was killed in Nuru and it, it never happened, he never came west and it was Brigham Young and, and those leaders in Utah who were able to live polygamy openly and which allowed to have more kids and so on. But in Nauvoo, it was very secret, both because it was illegal. And Joseph Smith was really under a lot of pressure from all, you know, legal pressure from all kinds of directions, you know, but also because of the problems with Emma. Emma was not one of these first wives who said I support you, Joseph, go ahead and do it. Um It was like sometimes she kind of accepted it and then she wouldn’t. And um so that’s
[1:31:08] Michelle: just to it is, but again, this is all based on later claims, right? Like we get the stories of Emma from these later sources, not, not that they need to be rejected. I just wanted to clarify that like the stories
[1:31:22] Todd Compton: are fairly contemporary, like in Clayton, Clayton’s right
[1:31:27] Michelle: from, from Clayton from like 132. Clayton is the only source for them though, because some people consider I’m still studying out how reliable, I can Clayton to be because I find some of, like, in some ways Clayton is troubling to me. I don’t know if I see him as fully reliable too. But, but, you know, that’s a different discussion. I, I had two questions. So Jenny reader who wrote the more recent, um, biography of Emma first, I think is what it was called. That was another source I used, she doesn’t think that 132 was ever meant to be public. She thinks it was a private, um, you know, she believes it was a revelation, which I have my questions about. She believes it was private between Joseph and Emma. Do you? And then she also claims that there was a covenant that they took to not talk about polygamy. Do you know about you? Do you like, I, I don’t know what she’s references when she says that there was that they covenanted to not talk about it. She, I, she hasn’t cited anything and I can’t find anything. And what do you think of her, of her belief that 132 was never meant to be public?
[1:32:32] Todd Compton: I, that, that’s something I haven’t been, you know, I ought to read what she wrote because I haven’t read what you, so you’ll have to let me show me the, the article or what it was and so I’ll read it.
[1:32:45] Michelle: Maybe she’ll come talk to me if I get lucky. Ok. So, um, all right. And then so, so I guess
[1:32:53] Todd Compton: I don’t think there was, I don’t think there was a standard oath people took. But I do know that often when he married women, he, he, or girls, he, um, young women, he told them, don’t tell anyone
[1:33:10] Michelle: like Emily Partridge and, ok. Ok.
[1:33:15] Todd Compton: So it was extremely secret.
[1:33:18] Michelle: Ok. So that’s, I guess my question because, because one thing I find, well, that maybe I disagree with you on is that you have the, um, perspective that if there was a ceremony, they were married, they were married and if they were married they were sexually active. And for me, a marriage means you take your husband’s name, you cohabit, you have a public ceremony where the community recognizes you as a couple. You, you know, there, there are lots of other things and I don’t see any of those things taking place. Like there definitely wasn’t any cohabitation. I don’t know of any of the women that started to go by Sister Smith. You know, like, like we give them that last name but I don’t know that they ever took it and there were definitely no Children. And, um, so I guess I’m, I’m wondering why we have the assumption that there was sex when there were none of the other trappings of marriage that I, that I see unless I’m missing something.
[1:34:16] Todd Compton: Um, well, pa part of this is the fact that navoo polygamy was, was secret and that Joseph Smith was under legal danger all the time. And that Emma Smith, you know, without going into the whole story, like one time, didn’t she threaten to divorce him? And that would have been a,
[1:34:43] Michelle: they’re just assumptions. We don’t have any documentation of it. But people assume that is my understanding.
[1:34:50] Todd Compton: Yeah,
[1:34:52] Michelle: because I find it interesting that he, oh, go ahead. Sorry.
[1:34:57] Todd Compton: It wasn’t open polygamy or what I call practical polygamy in, in Utah. But I do, you know, I, I did use that standard as of a marriage ceremony. If there’s a marriage ceremony, I’m, I’m accepting it as a marriage. But I agree with you that, you know, because it was secret polygamy in Navoo and Joseph Smith was married to Emma and had problems with Emma that it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t like what I call the practical polygamy that you had in Utah. But I do believe there were marriage ceremonies and it’s kind of artificial. Um, you can say, well, maybe this marriage ceremony really didn’t mean much. So, it really wasn’t a ceremony and you could say that. But, um,
[1:35:46] Michelle: ok. Well, and we have things like, like, if I’m not, if I’m not. No. And, and I, I totally value that. I’m, I’m just considering if I would have a different measure because I think that, like you said, there are disagreements on who is wives and, you know, we can all come to it with our own criteria. I like, I guess, I think it’s good to acknowledge that the criteria aren’t set in stone. There’s not some set of this is the automatic criteria that, that you must, it’s the only valid way to measure it, right? Because like, I believe and you, you’ll know this. But my memory is that the Partridge sisters both recorded separate, uh maybe it was in their affidavits or something, but they both, they’re the ones we get this story about the sort of mock wedding when like that, you know, we get the whole story about that. They were already married to Joseph, then Emma chose them, then they got remarried. And interestingly, both in their separate accounts agree on the date. So they both say the same date. But we know that couldn’t have been the date because Emma wasn’t in Nuvo at the time. And so it’s so to me that’s suspicious because the fact that they get the same date means that they, you know, like it, I, I know that in retrospective people can get the wrong dates but there’s a lot of suspicious stuff going on there that and they’re the only source for that entire story. So that’s why for me it’s, does that like, like, I think it’s valid to question that and maybe you disagree.
[1:37:17] Todd Compton: No, it’s no, it’s to it. And, um, and the, with the problem with the date a, as you say, in retrospective evidence, often you get dates wrong. It’s just like I, my example of that is when I was in third grade, I was in central central school in Alamosa, Colorado. And my teacher was Mrs Lobato and I had heard before I got in her class that she yelled at her students. So I was terrified that she would yell at me and one day she yelled at me. Ok?
[1:37:58] Michelle: But you can’t say the date. I have
[1:37:59] Todd Compton: no idea what year that was. But I remember.
[1:38:03] Michelle: Yeah, I know exactly. I always am like that was 10 years ago or something. Yeah, I know it happened. I don’t know when. Right. But at the same time, right. But at the same time, if I’m telling a story and someone else is, if I’m giving a history and I say a date and someone else is giving the history and say, says a date and we both say the same date, but it’s the wrong date. Then it starts to look like something fishy might be going on that to me, do you know? Because
[1:38:31] Todd Compton: they might have gone to, you know, like Emily might have gone to Eliza and said Eliza, what, what was that first date? And Eliza might have done something like that.
[1:38:43] Michelle: That’s possible at the same time. It is strange that you wouldn’t remember your anniversary, your wedding day. But, but you know, like that’s different than a third grade. Like, like, like I know what my anniversary is just like, I know
[1:38:58] Todd Compton: it’s so different than what I call practical polygamy or monogamous marriages where we have, you know, you have pictures and you have invitations and, and announcement newspapers and definitely for polygamous marriages. None, none of this was happening.
[1:39:20] Michelle: Ok. Yeah, that’s, I think that’s fair. So that’s why it’s, I think I, what I really value is bringing the discussion to people. So that, because I personally don’t think we can prove definitively one way or the other. I don’t think once, but I don’t think we have enough evidence to make a slam dunk case one way or the other where everyone is forced to agree that that’s my perspective on it. So I think the best thing we can do is bring up the discussion so that people can try to sort it out for themselves. That that’s my, that, you know, that’s why I think this is valuable.
[1:39:59] Todd Compton: And I think you could, you could say that in all history, very little is absolute, you know, like people can disagree about very basic things. Um And as I say, two good historians can look at the same diary, a really good diary and have totally different points of view on, on what was said. So, you know, and one thing that happens is like you read Emily Partridge um memoir where she talks about her marriage to Joseph Smith. And you just say it’s kind of like talking to someone who you just met on the street and they tell you a story and do I believe this, you know, do I believe, do I believe this, um, does this person seem trustworthy to me? And so one thing you, you can do when you’re reading historical sources is, is this person trustworthy. And often you find, you find, um, conflicts in evidence, just like in a modern law case in history, you find conflicts in evidence. And so as I mentioned, you have to try to work out those conflicts somehow. And so it’s just an ongoing
[1:41:28] Michelle: messy, it’s a messy,
[1:41:29] Todd Compton: fascinating struggle. Totally fascinating. And it’s like the detective work, even though you come to conclusions, the detective work just keeps on going. You keep finding new documents and, and, um, but another historian may write on the same subject and it’s gives you a different point of view. And uh Richard Bushman’s book, Rough Stone Rolling, you know, he’s, he’s a wonderful person and a wonderful scholar. And, um, but so his, his treatment of J Smith polygamy was, um, it, it gave me insight at the same time. At the same time, I disagreed with some of the ways he dealt with justice Smith polygamy. Um He didn’t ii, I really think that if you’re writing a full biography of someone, you need to have a paragraph for each of the wives. And so instead he looked at some of the wives and looked at some of the some of the stories and did a great job of it and um but he left other things out.
[1:42:42] Michelle: So OK, so let me ask you this. So one of the things when we’re trying to say, does this make sense? Does this, you know, is it like? So 132 is the justification and explanation of polygamy, right? It’s our canonized. It’s, it’s supposed to be the revelation of Joseph laying out this doctrine given by God, right? So does it trouble you that Joseph Smith’s polygamy is so contrary to anything laid out in 132 like 132 is very specific about you marry virgins and you, you know it and like it lays out criteria and Joseph was marrying married women and was y you know, and, and, and even with Hebrew C. Kimball saying, hey, here’s my daughter, you know, to Mar like, like let’s use her as this as a tool in our desire to be connected. Well, in my desire to be connected to you, you know, like there’s nothing about any of this in 132 that would justify it. So for you, how do you relate Joseph’s polygamy to 132? Or was that something you didn’t even get into is trying to make sense of how those go together?
[1:44:03] Todd Compton: Well, it’s DNC 132 obviously is a really important document on polygamy and um but it didn’t have lists of wives. So in one way. I, I obviously had to work with it but it wasn’t like central to telling the, the life stories of, of these women and it deals most, it tells you more about the conflict with Emma and of course I, I felt like Emma had been covered by and Avery and so,
[1:44:36] Michelle: so, so, so free. Oh, am I interrupting? Sorry. Did you have more to say,
[1:44:40] Todd Compton: or should I clarify? It was not central to in sacred loneliness.
[1:44:48] Michelle: So, for you,
[1:44:49] Todd Compton: I used it every now and then, but it wasn’t central. Yeah.
[1:44:53] Michelle: So, so for you, you would just kind of say, yeah, Joseph didn’t really worry about 132 in his practice. Yeah. And
[1:45:03] Todd Compton: I think DNC 132 had a specific purpose and it wasn’t to, it, it wasn’t to give uh you know, like a 40 page explanation of polygamy with a memoir of how he had practiced polygamy or a defense of how he had practiced polygamy in certain ways with certain lives. It was, it was more an ex kind of a attempt to convince Emma that polygamy would, was the right thing that it was a oh necessary for salvation.
[1:45:41] Michelle: OK. And that’s based on William Clayton’s explanation of how hi I’m asking because because the document itself well, and the document itself actually does claim to be the revelation justifying and explaining polygamy. So, so it has kind of a dual, you know, I, I would say it goes beyond just convincing Emma. But, but I, I hear what you’re saying. So, OK, so this is my last question is, uh, and you know, and then if there’s anything else you want to add and I will again, just plug your books in sacred loneliness. And then, oh, I have my other one here. The documents. I like, I want people to know, you know, that they’re good, good, like they’re good books there. It is. You have it. I said, yeah. Um So, um so for people who um are skeptical of Joseph’s polygamy or are adamant that Joseph was a polygamist? What would you say to them? What would your claim be or your ex, you know, like what are they missing or what are they, you know, would you refute them or, and how so?
[1:46:57] Todd Compton: Well, you know, I would tell them to continue and read as much primary documentation as they can and um and possibly if they feel like they’re interpretation is justified, write about it, right? Uh You know, using all the standards of good history and so continue and read the primary documents and we haven’t talked a lot, there’s just writing history and reading history is, is a really complicated thing. There’s so many elements to it. And one is, you know, we, we’ve talked about some things like, can we trust late evidence? Uh What happens when documents conflict with each other? Um What are the motives? Do we trust the writer, you know, and it sounds like you, you’re a little skeptical of, um, William Clark. But for me, the, some of the things like I, I love Emily Partridge and, uh, she, she wrote a lot about all different sections of her life and I love to read the, about the different parts of her life, not just in another, but I, I thoroughly trust her. I mean, when it’s retrospective, she may get dates wrong, but as a person, I, I just really love and, and trust her. And so, um but someone else may think of her as who’s been convinced to, to tell untruths, you know, another, another issue for history is um a lot of this, you find in legal, you know, in legal situations also, but if one person sees, you know, like an accident and takes a picture and then another person sees the accident and you have three witnesses who’ve seen the accident. Um and agree basically, um that, that, um that, that’s more believable if you have more than one. And so if you have a number of witnesses who agree among themselves, it’s, it’s more convincing. So I, I find this weight of evidence of evidence among people, I trust at the same time, they’re people, they’re fallible. Um They’re limited in their point of view. Um All, all of these um limitations that we have as human beings, you know, at the same time when we have a lot of evidence. It, it’s, I find that convincing.
[1:50:11] Michelle: Ok. So,
[1:50:15] Todd Compton: but for those who are disagreeing, you know, keep on investigating, keep on doing research and writing too.
[1:50:28] Michelle: That’s, that’s excellent. I Todd, I appreciate you so much. I just, I appreciate your work and your contributions to Mormon history and to this topic. I appreciate you as a person. I just really appreciate your humility
[1:50:42] Todd Compton: and vice versa for all you’ve accomplished with your podcast.
[1:50:48] Michelle: Well, thank you and thank you so much for talking to me and you know, if anyone has. Yeah. And so I hope you have a wonderful night and I would love to talk to you again sometime.
[1:50:59] Todd Compton: Ok. Have a good day.
[1:51:01] Michelle: Thanks a lot.
[1:51:03] Todd Compton: Bye.
[1:51:04] Michelle: I want to again sincerely thank Todd for his willingness to talk about these topics and to face some, hopefully not too challenging or uncomfortable of questions. And I loved his advice to keep studying, keep researching, start writing and contributing to the discussion, which is what I’m trying to do here. But I thought that that was just so insightful, so much good information shared and hopefully, you know, maybe we can start making a little more room for these discussions. So thank you so much for joining us and we’ll see you next time.
