55: Contesting New Mormon History w/ John Hajicek | 132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

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John Hajicek has spent 50 years deeply immersed in early LDS material culture, developing a level of mastery that is very rare. He has acquired over 250,000 artifacts, including books, pamphlets, articles, letters, hymnals, and other physical items from our shared LDS history.
It was such a treat to get to hear his incredible insights!

You can follow John on Facebook
And at Mormonism.com

Transcript

[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we are starting on this new course of studying the scriptural, theological and historical case for Joseph’s polygamy. I’m so glad that you are here. I always recommend listening to these episodes in order, starting at the beginning because I do think that the scriptural and theological case for polygamy is the most important part of this discussion. But this part is important as well, so I am very excited to be able to bring you this interview, this discussion. With this fascinating man, John Hayazek, I’m so glad that he reached out to me and that I had the opportunity to talk to him. I think he brings such just a fascinating and really important perspective to this discussion. So I am, am so eager to continue to learn these new. New insights and perspectives. I really value the information that he has about the historical documents and about William Clayton and the journals and all of these different parts. So I hope that this will be as valuable and insightful to you as it was to me. I’m really glad that you’re here. Please enjoy. All right. Welcome to this episode of 132 Problems. I am actually really excited to bring to you this information today. I am here with my new friend John Hayacek, who, um, I met online. He’s been, he’s been coming around more and more. And then recently we spoke together at an event and I was fascinated by what he shared. Um, and so, so I’m really excited to have this opportunity to sit down and talk to him and get his expertise and information and share it with all of you. So, My best attempt at an at an introduction, and John, you’re gonna have to help me out a bit with this, but John has an amazing story that’s going to be a little bit foreign to those of us who are Utah Mormons and kind of we’re, since we’re the biggest ones, we tend to think we’re the only ones. I think that we don’t realize the other branches of Mormonism that have a lot to bring to this discussion. So my understanding, John, is that your family moved into a tiny little town. On a road called Mormon Road that basically was an early establishment in the Mormon Church, and the orig the descendants of the original Mormons, and when you say they didn’t come west, you mean they didn’t even go west to Missouri or Navvo, let alone to Salt Lake, right? Well,

[02:35] John Hajicek: some did. No, there was a gathering place for, it was like an outpost to Navo. So Bore, Wisconsin in the town of Burlington, Wisconsin is a It is a ghost town now, but it’s uh it was a village on the uh county line road. They named it Mormon Road, and it was established there by Joseph Smith Senior, if you can believe it, in 1835 during the Kirtland period when he Basically set up a branch in, in Burlington, which was then called Foxville in 1835. So they were Mormons there in 1835, there were Mormons there in 1844, and there were still Mormons there in 1856 that didn’t go to Utah, and there were still their grandchildren and great-grandchildren when my family moved there in 1980.

[03:24] Michelle: Hey, this is, isn’t this amazing? So they were not Brigham’s church. They were not LDS. They were not RLDS in um the reorganized church. They were their own independent um branch, I guess, of or sect of Mormonism. And was their focus primarily on the um Book of Mormon and the ear do they have a version of the Doctrine of Covenants? They have the 1835 doctrine and Covenants that they rely on. Oh,

[03:52] John Hajicek: they’re like the Novo church, but they’re still arguing about the succession crisis and the leanings, of course, at that time were towards James Strang and still are. So of the different succession claimants in 1844 through, oh say about 1867. There are about 6 large groups that are still, you know, viable groups. The, uh, followers of James Strang, uh, from 1844, Brigham Young was elected to be the president of the church in 1847, and I have the document. I have Brigham Young’s, uh, election with me from Pottawa County, uh, Iowa in 1847, and then, and then, you know, the, uh, um. The reorganized church in 1860, the Temple Lot Church in 1867, the, the Monongahela, Pennsylvania group with William Bickerton, which are sort of a uh re-enlivenment of Cindy Rigdon’s group in, in 1863. Uh, who did I miss? Oh, Alpheus Cutler, uh, is on the Mormon trail and doesn’t continue all the way west and Um, in about 1853, uh, he makes a succession claims. So those are the six viable, uh, traditions of, of Mormon, uh, succession claimants, let’s say, that are

[05:14] Michelle: still, are those all still in existence today,

[05:17] John Hajicek: yes, yes,

[05:18] Michelle: OK.

[05:20] John Hajicek: Fashion crisis period until today. And then, of course, all the different uh representations of those. So there are obviously many, many um churches that believe that Joseph Smith the 3rd was, was, was Joseph Smith’s successor. Um, but there that one tradition of the reorganized church in 18.

[05:40] Michelle: OK. So you are a site. If I’m a brighamite, you’re a strangite. Is that and and but you aren’t among the sites that joined the RLTS. You’re from that tradition.

[05:53] John Hajicek: Right. So they formed the nucleus of the reorganized church uh in 1860. Really already, the reorganized church existed uh informally as a what they call the new organization in, well, 1853, 1854, they start to, uh, they start to build momentum before persuading Joseph Smith, uh, to take on the mantle, let’s say, of his father.

[06:18] Michelle: OK, OK, so I want to back up to your history. So your father moved you to this town where there were these descendants, and you were a kid who joined in with these elderly descendants of, of these early Mormons, and you became sort of the young guy and their congregation, if I’m understanding this correctly and the one to carry it on

[06:41] John Hajicek: kind of what happened. So I, this all started really and 1973, it took seven years for my father to make the decision to move from Minneapolis, where I was raised, and move us to, uh, Wisconsin, but we, but we, um, but we studied for seven years. So I, I really have 50 years from 1973 to 2023. I have 50 years from age 9 until, uh, now, uh, studying what I call contested Latter-day Saint history or um. Yeah, yeah, contested.

[07:18] Michelle: So, OK, I want to get into that too. I first wanna ask, so was your father converted? Like, why did he move you to this little ghost town on Mormon Road?

[07:26] John Hajicek: For that reason, yes, he was converted. Yes, he was converted. He was, uh, absolutely, yes. So my story starts really with my family story. My dad was an agnostic, a physicist, worked on his PhD at the University of Minnesota, almost side by side with President Nelson. Um, and, uh, you know, worked on some top secret missile defense projects. He was chief engineer for the Nike missile defense program, and then he was chief engineer for the software on the CAT scan, and then he just gives all this up and he moves to, he moves to this ghost town, uh, to be close to the roots of Mormonism, Mormon history.

[08:07] Michelle: That is amazing. So, so you’re one of those stories that, you know, we talk about how you can kind of see the finger of God on people. It feels like that’s kind of your story as well. I’m sure that’s how it has felt to you. And so going forward, you got very interested in Mormon history from a very young age, and I assume that by contested Mormon history to some extent you mean. You know, you’re the little guy, you have this big other church, so you’re, you’re, you’re having to prove your case much more than we ever felt like we had to prove our case because, you know, we, we didn’t, we didn’t know that we had to argue against you, I guess. So that, that toughened you up in, in getting information. And so now what I find fascinating is that you. Called BS on Mark Hoffman before pretty much anyone else. So I want you to tell me why you knew and you were just a teenager, correct? And

[09:05] John Hajicek: Right. So in 1981, I was taking a current affairs class, part of the history program at my high school. I would have been 17, just about to graduate, but we got free subscriptions to Time and Newsweek, which we’re reporting on the news of Hoffman’s discoveries in May of 1981, and I was already immersed in the writings of Joseph Smith, so familiar enough to look at those and think that’s not. You know, you can feel it. I could, uh, others couldn’t, but I, but I wasn’t reading probably as broadly. I was so, I was so immersed in just Joseph Smith and, and the Nu period that I think, you know, it, there were problems with the, the, the documents and the relationship to, for example, um. Uh, the, the Joseph Smith’s new translation or the Joseph Smith translation or the inspired version, depending on what branch. So

[10:03] Michelle: when you say you were studying Joseph Smith, I, I mean, I assume that doesn’t just mean like our LDS version of the Book of Mormon. Like tell me what you mean when you were studying the writings and the words of Joseph Smith. What access did you have?

[10:16] John Hajicek: Well, you said like the hand of God. I mean, these people are serious people. We, we were going to church with an outhouse and an oil burning stove and everybody in those days, it sounds like so long ago, 1980, we still brought out all of our novo books, so you carry your, your quad. To church, but they carried their times and seasons and their evening and Morning Star and their Rory Harold and their Northern Islander and their, you know, messenger and advocate from Kirtland and, and they have published or did they just have the original copies of copies? OK. So that’s a it’s a real history-based church because they’re still uh validating their faith through uh through presidential succession, through prophetic succession.

[11:07] Michelle: OK, so just like I can say, Alma chapter 12, you can say of times and seasons this date like you’re very familiar, you can quote that is OK, that’s so cool. Thank you for helping me understand that. So with that,

[11:22] John Hajicek: yeah, a sermon might be about the word of wisdom, but they’re gonna, they’re gonna quote Hiram Smith from the Times and Seasons in 1842 and say, but Hiram said. You know, they’re serious, yes.

[11:34] Michelle: OK, and do they have sort of, um, when I say articles of faith, I don’t mean Joseph. I mean, do they have their sectarian, these are the things we believe, or are they just in there hammering it out and fig and hashing, you know,

[11:44] John Hajicek: figuring out like, like historians uh do everywhere, yes, they’re, they’re all historians. They’re, they’re well represented at the John Whitmer Historical Association, for example, they’re They’re very active in their in their heritage and their history.

[12:00] Michelle: So your congregation is still there. Are you still an active member of this congregation?

[12:05] John Hajicek: Well, I live in Independence, Missouri now, so I’m living in my second uh church history site. Um, the church, uh, that follows James Strang is, you know, nearly extinct and it’s very fragmented, but it, but it’s still like vibrant, and it has a lot of uh enthusiasm among historians and other, even non-Mormons, uh, uh, people and scholars in Wisconsin and Michigan. So I always say James Strang has more fans than than followers. Um, the church up there is, is a little fragmented. There’s a church that was almost like a reorganized Strangite church. They actually denominate themselves Strangites, even though I consider that pejorative, uh, as you would righamite, but they, but they, but they formed a new church in 1961. Uh, their charter actually says, you know, they’re not affiliated with any previously existing church. So they formed a new, uh, strang church and they, uh, I was brought into a To an inner circle of of these children and grandchildren of the novel. Settlers. I mean, the person who baptized me and ordained me was the grandchild, not the great grandchild, but the grandchild of, of somebody that was in Palmyra when Joseph Smith had his first vision. That was in Navo working on the Navo Temple, that then was in Wisconsin and in Michigan, uh, during the 1840s.

[13:32] Michelle: You can touch it. That’s kind of, yeah, that’s so cool. So,

[13:36] John Hajicek: so they shared with me their books and they, they emphasized, you know, the importance of, of examining. Not just the succession crisis, but any part of Latter-day Saint history through through historical documents, but with a skepticism that you don’t see among scholars in Utah.

[13:54] Michelle: OK, OK, so you, it sounds like we’re kind of selected or chosen. You were their hope to carry this on.

[14:04] John Hajicek: I was probably the hope of a nearly extinct, right?

[14:07] Michelle: OK, I, I just, it gives me chills. I just, I don’t know. I see God’s hand working in so many ways and it’s so, you know, I, I love hearing this. And so, so what made you leave that church? You moved to Missouri. And then, and then how do you affiliate now? Do you, have you started a new branch of those kinds of people, or are you just independent?

[14:29] John Hajicek: No, most, most followers of James Str are independent, um, not part of the 1961, uh, mainline followers, but more scattered and independent and meeting in their homes, as I always have with my family and friends.

[14:44] Michelle: OK, so you, you have a gathering of family and friends that you still, do you do the sacraments? Do you, OK. And, and do you do that weekly? Are these OK questions asked? I’m so interested. So if I ask anything We

[14:58] John Hajicek: do it on Saturday actually, yes, the Latter Day Saints in Wisconsin are Sabbath day Sabbath keepers. Uh, James Strang, uh said that uh he was. He was following the the Joseph Smith, you know, was reconciling the Old and New Testaments and restoring, as he even said in a sermon in 1844, he was restoring everything from every prior dispensation. He was restoring the ordinances and the laws and the priesthoods and and everything and, and so he was restoring everything that existed prior to the law of Moses, but maybe at the time of Moses. So we viewed. He viewed uh things like sacrifice, and by the way, Joseph Smith did too, talked about animal sacrifice on, on many occasions, uh, animal sacrifice and restoring things like that. So ultimately, you know, you’re restoring the Old Testament things like an Aronic priesthood and a Malchic priesthood and temples and tabernacles, maybe polygamy depending on your view, um. But, but this belief that the, I know, I know, but the full gospel, but the full, but it, but you know, it was being talked about in Nabu at least. So this was something that was, so the Smiths are coming out of a rich, uh tradition of restoration in Vermont, uh, where the Smiths lived for 25 years and then in western New York for 15 years. So they moved to Vermont in 18 1791. They’re there for 25 years and beginning around 1800, there’s a lot of uh what other scholars outside of our movement called restoration, and that spreads from Vermont to Kentucky, you see it in how how people name their children, their their Old Testament people that are, you know, if you’re in a log cabin in Vermont or Kentucky, you’re reading the Old Testament, you’ve got nothing else to do. The Smiths didn’t even have a door on their cabin when they, when they first settled in Vermont in in 1791. I mean, they spent the winter with a fire in the doorway. Um, so, you know, times are tough and you see how the Smiths. Lucy names her children Old Testament names while they’re in Vermont, and when once they get out of Vermont, she’s naming her children aristocratic names like like Catherine and Don Carlos, but in but in Vermont, she’s naming her children Ephraim and and Joseph and Samuel and and uh well Alvin, I don’t know where that comes from, but but uh Hirum even is an Old Testament name or Masonic name, but.

[17:30] Michelle: Um. Oh, interesting. OK.

[17:32] John Hajicek: So, but so you’re, so you’re, so you’re there, so you’re, you’re in this, you’re in this restoration, uh, movement, and so Joseph then is is still, you know, it, it, it, it, it’s that faith of that Smith family that, that, that has the Book of Mormon brought to them and, and, and then, and then goes through this restoration process that I think the

[17:56] Michelle: And they were. Oh, they were in some ways similar to you where you’re the elderly people that that adopted you in, you know, um, saw you with sort of a prophetic mission, maybe I would maybe that’s the wrong word, but with a mission that they and and the Joseph Smith family, his family saw him with a prophetic mission to carry forward. They had the um Right, the family tradition that there would be a prophet in their line and so he, he was, they didn’t just view him as a kid, they viewed him with a with a mission to accomplish is my understanding. And so, yeah, but I’m a, I

[18:30] John Hajicek: don’t know.

[18:33] Michelle: I know I said the wrong thing. I just, I just think it’s interesting to kind of carry that weight.

[18:37] John Hajicek: Pretty lowly. Yeah. So, Joseph is clearly prepared for this mission, and he’s prepared for this mission in the context and environment of the 25 years his parents spent in Vermont and the 15 years they spent in Western New York from 1816 until 1831. So he’s prepared, but he’s not prepared in In nothing, he’s prepared you know the the the. America is prepared for the church. There is, there is there is restoration enthusiasm taking place and so Joseph Smith is able to with the Book of Mormon persuade people like Sydney Rigdon. You know, and what does the Book of Mormon have? The Book of Mormon has this, this, uh, reconciliation of Old Testament and New Testament. And Joseph Smith is still talking about that consistently all the way through 1844. And in 1844, when he’s giving his sermons in the spring, he’s talking about the restoration of all prior dispensations.

[19:40] Michelle: And so throughout his life, that was his vision. That was what he Right.

[19:45] John Hajicek: So we under James Strang, we see these this continuation of restoring offices and Um, priesthoods and, and ordinances and so you see the Sabbath a Sabbath restored under James Strang in the, in the late 1840s.

[20:02] Michelle: OK, OK, so let me ask you a question. So what, how would you describe your testimony of Joseph Smith, your testimony of the Book of Mormon? Do you view him as a divinely called prophet of God who restored all of this and translated golden plates?

[20:23] John Hajicek: Um, yes.

[20:24] Michelle: Say that again. You said,

[20:25] John Hajicek: yeah, absolutely, yes, yes, of course, yes, but my role in in meeting you and, and in the community you and I share is as that of a historian. So I’m an ordinary, um, latter-day saint, and I, uh. You know, fervent historian.

[20:44] Michelle: Yes, yeah, and I know we’re blending topics just because I find it fascinating. So I I know I I you’re, you’re here to talk to me because of your historical work and your historical expertise, but I didn’t want to leave this aside cause I think it’s good for all of us to understand, you know, I, I think it’s a fascinating story and I appreciate understanding a little bit more of who you are and where you come from and what your perspective is and so. So I have another question. Now, my understanding, correct me if I’m wrong, is that string became a polygamist, which is what led to the RLDS Church, Jason Briggs, and if I, you know, I’m, I’m still getting that figured out a bit, but So, so does how, like, like if you are in that and I’m, I apologize for using a pejorative string I I don’t, I just I’m trying to use a description. So, um, so do you like, like, where’s polygamy for you? Do you reject that in string and they both followed the same, like, like how do you look at that?

[21:44] John Hajicek: Well, so as a historian, you know, I’m a cultural historian. I’m a social historian. I’m not, I don’t answer the question of morality, and it doesn’t, it’s not a concern to me. I just park that, I guess. So I’m interested in what happened. And, you know, James Strang was a, was a really good human. He was an abolitionist even before he was Mormon. He ordained blacks by general conference resolution in 1849. He ordained women to some offices by 1851. Uh, his, his followers ordained Indians in the 19th century. Uh, he was a Michigan state legislator elected twice, and, uh, all of his speeches are about uh favorable and fair treatment of blacks and Indians,

[22:33] Michelle: I want to point out that. What I’m hearing, he sounds a lot like Joseph Smith, actually. Right,

[22:40] John Hajicek: and his polygamy, James Str had 4 wives after his first. Um, and. He, his, his take on polygamy was a lot different. It was, I think, you know, social experimentation. It was uh Old Testament based, it was faith-based, but it was also very um It was very kind to women. It was actually the argument was that women should have a right to marry whomever they want. It was almost like a libertarian, uh, argument that women should have a right to marry whomever they want without, um, they should have they should have choice to marry whoever whomever they want. OK,

[23:22] Michelle: I, I definitely have my thoughts on that, but I am,

[23:25] John Hajicek: I know, but here’s the thing, but here’s the thing. Because I’m not against polygamy, it actually means more that I’m skeptical of the history of Joseph Smith and polygamy. I know that this was being kicked around in Navvo, and I sometimes, I kind of coined the expression I’ve now heard elsewhere, but I coined the expression that Joseph Smith flirted with polygamy, the family flirted with polygamy. They were in the environment of polygamy going all the way back to probably 1800, 1802. Um, they, uh, polygamy has come up in the Kirtland Doctrine and Covenants. It’s come up, uh, you know, in the, in the Book of Mormon. I mean, polygamy is not something that Joseph Smith has never heard of, so they’re gonna be talking about this in, and, and that’s OK with me. Yeah, so I, but there are, but this, these, these historians that have 50 wedding conspiracies, they’re conspiracy theorists. If you believe that Joseph Smith had 50 wives and therefore had 50. 50 weddings, and there are no documents, there are no children, you know, you’re a conspiracy theorist. All the other historians that uh are part of that mainstream new Mormon history that have that have tried to compromise. Faith-based Mormonism with anti-Mormonism, the protagonists and antagonists, you know, they’re, they’re um they’re conspiracy theorists.

[24:54] Michelle: OK, I’m gonna want to get to that because, because that’s fascinating to hear. So I wanna ask James String, do you see any tie between Joseph Smith and James String? Was his polygamy because he learned it from Joseph Smith?

[25:08] John Hajicek: He probably learned it from Joseph Smith’s followers. He had so many people from Nuvo. He had You know, William Marks, who was, who was uh the state president and who is James Strang’s counselor. George Adams is another counselor. George Adams was in 1844 ordained to be in a special apostle to to Russia. There are just so many people, you know, Joseph, James Strang. Whatever you think about James Strang, I, I wanna, I wanna tell you that I’m in good company. So James Strang was supported by, let’s talk about his letter. James Strang alleges he gets a letter from Emma, James String alleges he gets a letter from Joseph Smith. But Emma Smith believes it’s real. His wife, who knows his, like, I know if you showed me a letter from my mom or somebody close to me, I would know if they wrote it. He has Emma Smith that believes this is a letter from her husband. Lucy believes it’s a letter from her son. All of Joseph Smith’s sisters believe Joseph Smith wrote the letter. His only surviving brother, William. Joseph and Hiram’s brother believes his own bishop, his own state president, his mayor, his postmaster, his city marshal, all the important, so many important people, and the artistic people, the free thinkers like Sutliff Maudsley and David Rogers, the people that wrote books and and edited newspapers and Uh, I can go on on several of the apostles, several of the presidents of 70 followed James Strang. The letter was highly credible. All the Book of Mormon witnesses and Joseph Smith’s clerks, all the Book of Mormon witnesses, maybe we don’t know about Oliver Cowdery for sure, but Oliver Cowdery moves to James Strang’s settlement. He’s in Walworth County. He practices law in the same courthouse with James Strang at the same time that all the other witnesses are supporting James Strang. This is an incredible thing that’s that’s vanished from history, and I’m not here to argue the faith part of it, but as a matter of history, if James Strange is highly likable. Well why so many historians are, you know, historians are enthusiastic about James Trang even if

[27:15] Michelle: Yeah, well, and just so you know, I’m not even slightly challenging you. I’m fascinated. I love learning about this. I want to know, so, so what you’re talking about just so everyone is up with us, the letter is the is the letter that Joseph Smith wrote declaring James String to be his successor. And is that letter still in existence? Do you own

[27:36] John Hajicek: that? No, Yale University owns that one.

[27:39] Michelle: OK. But we can access it and look at it online.

[27:43] John Hajicek: You can, yes.

[27:45] Michelle: OK, I’ll see if I can track down a picture of that cause that is, that is really cool. So that’s the letter you’re talking about that Joseph, so, so there is no reason to not believe that Joseph wrote a letter to James String declaring him to be, do you know the wording? Is it to be the new president of the church to like what’s the wording?

[28:03] John Hajicek: Well, so that’s an implied appointment, and that’s one of the complications of that letter. That letter, uh, implies based on context in the letter that James Trang has been appointed, but some historians actually believe the letter is authentic, but don’t agree with the conclusions of the letter. Uh, at in 1844 in May of of Uh, February of 1844, uh, Joseph is sending expeditions all around the country. He’s sending James Emmett and others, 25 people probably to uh Oregon. He’s sending Lyman White to Texas. He’s Harley P. Pratt went right up by James Strang’s community in Chicago, which is Today, just an hour, hour and a half. Parley Pratt was looking at Chicago as a, as an alternative to Navvo because it was friendlier and, and they wanted to get onto Lake Michigan, which is where James Stre ended up settling. So, OK. So this, this idea that that the context is correct in this letter. So it’s not just that, that the people close to Joseph Smith thought it was authentic, but there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of the voice of Joseph Smith is in the letter. It wasn’t in the Hoffman documents. It is in that letter, um. Um, the context is correct for the events happening in Abu even though James Trang is in Wisconsin, where if he had forged the letter, he couldn’t have known, uh, so much that’s. It’s a highly credible letter, but you may not you may conclude the letter is authentic, but disagree that, so people think James Strang was supposed to establish a stake, that he’s gonna, he was gonna be a stake president, not, not Justice Smith’s successor.

[29:41] Michelle: Well, in any case, I’m very thankful that James Strang kept his, um, his branch going because I think that the richness that you and and your fellow congregants or branch members are able to bring with the historical work you’ve done and the other perspective, I think it’s so important. It makes the whole discussion so much richer because I think you have a very unique voice and perspective and Sort of um mastery over, like you said, the voice of doc of Joseph Smith and the documents and the, you know, that I think is really essential in this discussion. So I appreciate you walking us through that because I think it’s very enlightening to all of us and important to understand.

[30:26] John Hajicek: And just in a real like one minute summary then, so it doesn’t end there. That’s the beginning of the James Drang era. So there’s 12 years of dramatic history, there’s You know, restorative, other restorative things taking place. James Trang translates books and records, and he has witnesses, and then he’s ultimately killed just like Joseph Smith in almost identical circumstances, shot by two people that uh that. We disgruntled followers, uh, and they conspired with the US government. The US Navy sent a navy ship in and they assassinated James String. So it’s, it’s quite a story, but Um, and then they get, and then they’re printing a book. So the book of commandments, you know, about is the press is destroyed in independence in 1833 July 20th, 1833, um, exactly 12 years or 12 years after Joseph Smith is killed, James Strang is killed, but he’s printing a book called The Book of the Law of the Lord, almost parallel to the Book of Commandments. And just as the Book of Commandments was destroyed with one signature that still had to be printed. The book of the law still had one signature to be printed and they destroyed the press and the the uncut sheets were gathered up and and taken off the uh the county and taken to Jackson County, which is not the same Jackson County, Jackson County, Wisconsin, but there’s like 100 cool parallels with James String. And the saints were driven out of the county, so.

[31:56] Michelle: We’re gonna have to dig into that more and more because now I have a million more questions and that is fascinating. So maybe I’ll have to have you on again to talk to to talk more about this. OK,

[32:05] John Hajicek: so just so to segue out of that then. So the point is not about. It’s I don’t want to make it the faith-based thing right now. My point is that That’s what drives my quest for documents. So I was shut out, uh, from the church history department. I was writing them letters in 1982 when I was a teenager. They answered me, the first presidency even answered me. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to write to them, but that was answered. And, um, Then I, I, I started going to the church history department in 1989, and I was just completely shut out. I wanted to see Willard Richard’s diary. I wanted to see William Clayton’s diary. I, I didn’t get to see a lot of things. They did let me type. I, I made the first known type script of the Teacher’s quorum record book from Kirtland, but not Willard Richard’s diary like I wanted to see. So I started collecting documents. I started just buying my own. I bought a Joseph. OK,

[33:00] Michelle: so let, let me sum this up because I want to make sure I’m on, I’m so what you are saying is you had this fascination with church history as a kid. You were well enough versed in all of the Nu Kirtland and Nu era documents to recognize and, and, and when I say that you um that you opposed, um. Mark Hoffman, you actually officially did. You published an article opposing him, so you’ve got that on record.

[33:27] John Hajicek: I’ve got it on record. No, wait, I have, I have the carbon copy. I didn’t have any credentials, and I, some people would still argue I don’t have any credentials, but I sent letters to the editor as a, as a 17 year old, I sent letters to the editor of Time and Newsweek. They weren’t published by But I made them on carbon copy on an old Remington typewriter. So I,

[33:46] Michelle: OK, that’s good. I’m OK, I like that you clarified that, but you do have like the proof cause it cause we can all say, oh, I knew Mark wasn’t legit now, but you actually have the evidence that you knew it originally. So I think that that speaks highly to your credibility. So with all of this experience, this um I would say not even just an interest, a passion, you know, your fascination with church history, you wanted to see what was available in Salt Lake, right, with, with the LDS Church, and they wouldn’t allow you access because you were not a member of the Salt Lakebas. Church. Am I getting that correct? Well, that

[34:23] John Hajicek: it felt that way, but I think a lot of people were denied access. But no, certainly there’s an elite class of of prestigiously educated and church uh church educated, you know, church employed and church published historians that do get to see the William Clayton diaries, the people that have seen them, you know, just not me. Um, I’m shut up, yes.

[34:45] Michelle: OK, and so they wouldn’t grant access. So it’s very, I guess, I guess to not overstate it, it’s very protected. The church history archives are are extremely protected. We don’t know who has access to them, but certainly you weren’t given access, and so you had no choice but to start making your own collection to start trying to get the documents yourself, so that they couldn’t just be sent to the archives so that you could do your own research. Am I on getting it so far?

[35:13] John Hajicek: OK, right, yes.

[35:15] Michelle: OK, so you became, that’s when you became a competitor, like you were going to auctions bidding against the, the group that the church had sent to get those. So the church is still collecting documents and adding them to the archive. The church is doing that actively now without. And they’re not like advertising all of the documents that they acquire. They’re just sending,

[35:38] John Hajicek: they have a they have a pretty low budget. I don’t, they don’t buy a lot. They, they generally don’t buy from individuals, uh, but if a high profile document shows up on the national market, they will, they will compete for that and usually lose, but Um, they, they, they have a small, a small document budget, I think, or some people say they don’t have it. I think maybe sometimes somebody will step in, it’s, it’s maybe part of it. If there’s a national, uh, high profile auction, the church may. Uh, may find a philanthropist to help them a bid or or to pay for them.

[36:12] Michelle: That’s so interesting because we’re not uh like church lacking in wealth. So it’s interesting that they that they are having philanthropists help instead of I I anyway, I find that fascinating that they’re maybe it’s just they don’t feel that’s a good use of The Lord’s money, you know,

[36:31] John Hajicek: that’s how we got the Book of Abraham manuscripts. Joseph Smith had philanthropists, you could say, church members paid for the. For the papyri of in in the 1830s for the book of Abraham manuscripts.

[36:43] Michelle: Yeah, but in the 1830s, the church really didn’t have a lot of money. Now the LDS has a lot of money. That’s the difference. But OK, so you, you have started, like, so how long have you been buying documents? Is that since you were in high school, since,

[37:01] John Hajicek: since 1980. Yes. Mhm.

[37:04] Michelle: So you have been Going around the country, do you go to auctions? Do you knock on people’s doors that look like they have old attics and important places? Like how do you find the documents?

[37:16] John Hajicek: I go to auctions, I go to, you know. Auctions in New York City or Los Angeles, but I go to farm auctions in Vermont or Iowa. I have been doing it for so long that the main way I get things is just from networking. It’s just that people know that I’ll I’ll I’ll make a competing bid and

[37:37] Michelle: Um, if someone finds something in great grandma’s attic, they talk to someone who says, hey, call this guy, he can hook you up.

[37:46] John Hajicek: Right. And it isn’t about resources. I don’t have any more resources than anybody else. I just have a whole lot more care and and and uh love for the documents, so I put, I put all of my resources into.

[38:00] Michelle: And I assume you have buyers, so you’re able to resell, I would assume you haven’t.

[38:09] John Hajicek: No, I keep, I keep 99.9% of it. I sell it on occasion if something isn’t a good fit, often if it’s a Utah item or a Brigham Young item or something, I may, I may let it go in order to get something else, but it’s, it’s, it’s to make acquisitions. So if I have to sell something that fits better in a Utah institution. Then I would then I would let that go, and I would use that those resources to maybe buy some Kirtland hymnals or something like that.

[38:37] Michelle: OK, OK, so do you have, are you,

[38:40] John Hajicek: or if I have duplicates, yeah, I have duplicates of many of many of the. I’m more interested in unique things, so if I have if I have multiple copies of something, I can let one go to.

[38:51] Michelle: OK, OK. Are you going to establish a museum at some point, or um like, like, don’t you have, I mean, how many artifacts would you say you have?

[39:02] John Hajicek: About 250,000, and my hope is that the collection gets segmented depending on uh its category. Some is going to go to the University of Michigan’s Clements library, some will go to the the Yale University’s uh Beinecke Library. And some will go to the Peabody Essex Museum, and it depends. So the Peabody Essex is where I’d like my Joseph Smith family materials to go. My James Stre materials, I’d like to go, well, first to Yale, but if they already have it, then I want the duplicate to go to the University of Michigan. And if I have RLDS materials, I want them to go to Princeton. So I have, I have it sort of divided and if it’s something I bought uh more uh more investment quality like like a book of Mormon, I have too many copies of it an institution doesn’t need because they have copies, I would probably sell when I retire, sell some books of Mormon.

[39:56] Michelle: OK, so is this your full time job? Is this what you do full time?

[40:00] John Hajicek: Well, I’m retired. I was doing some other things.

[40:03] Michelle: Yes. OK, so now you’re doing it full time now that you’ve retired from your day job. OK. OK, that’s good to understand. So, so I am really interested because so the William Clayton diary is, you know, some of my listeners have said, what are you talking about with that? So can we discuss the importance of the William Clayton diary and um what it um what anyway, why it is such an important um thing to our discussion of polygamy, but then to the broader discussion of Joseph Smith and what we can understand about him.

[40:40] John Hajicek: It’s probably as important as anything we don’t know about. Um, when you say William Clayton diary, um, there are You know, they’re sort of they’ve enumerated him as as 6 diaries, but we refer to them as the, the, uh, first, the Manchester diary. Um, he was a convert in 1840 in a town called Penorham, I think it’s how you say it, Penorum. Uh, and it’s, it’s a little tiny. town across the river from. Uh, Preston, where there was a lot of Mormon activity, and Preston is maybe 35 miles northwest of Manchester, which is where they were publishing the, the Millennial Star Church newspaper in 1840. So that’s really the center of Mormon activity. And then 35 miles to the southwest is Liverpool, and in Liverpool, they, that’s ultimately where they print the Book of Mormon in 1841 in the church emerald in 1841. So that’s where the activity is. It’s up in the northwest. Of England and so he’s there in this little town and so he starts his diary on January 1st, 1840. That’s the first diary.

[41:55] Michelle: The diverted. That’s when he, he, he, he’s from, he would have a British accent and join the church in England. OK. OK.

[42:03] John Hajicek: So the second diary we call, we call the Novo diary. I’ll pause on that, hold off on that one for a second. That’s the Navvvo diary. It goes from I know that’s

[42:13] Michelle: I have one more quick question. Was William Clayton then, because I know that Brigham Young and um Um, Hebrewy. Kimball were serving missions in Navu. Were they the ones that converted him? They were his connection to the church. Do you know? Um,

[42:27] John Hajicek: you know, the more I think about it, I think he might have been converted as early as 1837. Let me think, he’s born. November Let’s see, when was he born? He was born July 27th of 1814, I think. So he would have been, he would have been just about, he was 3 weeks, no, not 20, the 20th, I think. Try to remember so many dates. He’s born, I think the 20th of July, I could be wrong. The 20th of July

[42:55] Michelle: 1814. I say I’m impressed because I struggle with all my kids’ birthdays, so I’m amazed.

[43:01] John Hajicek: He’s 3 weeks from turning 30 when Joseph Smith is killed. He’s in his 20s when Joseph Smith is killed. So he’s about 10 years, almost 10 years younger than Joseph. Uh, so he’s converted in 1837. He would have been, you know, he was young, like, like I was,

[43:15] Michelle: um, OK. OK, so sorry, continue. I just kind of wanted to make those connections and see, you know,

[43:22] John Hajicek: he would have been 23 I think. So 23, he’s converted and he marries at 18. Um, he marries a, a woman, um, Moon, uh.

[43:37] Michelle: Yeah, Sarah Moon is the sister and is it it’s not Nancy Moon. We can look at that.

[43:42] John Hajicek: Sarah, no, it’s Margaret and

[43:45] Michelle: Margaret Moon.

[43:47] John Hajicek: Uh, Margaret Moon, uh, no, that’s the sister.

[43:55] Michelle: Margaret is the I just barely read through his affidavit, so I’m trying to remember the name. I

[43:58] John Hajicek: used

[43:58] Michelle: to know,

[43:59] John Hajicek: I can’t remember anymore, ultimately he marries two sisters. And well,

[44:05] Michelle: first the one and then and then yeah, and

[44:07] John Hajicek: then Ruth, I’m sorry, Ruth, Ruth Moon. He married Ruth Moon in England and he married Margaret Moon later.

[44:14] Michelle: OK, OK. That’s that’s

[44:16] John Hajicek: the Manchester diary, right? Then there’s the Nu diary, and the Nu diary, so the Manchester diary goes through a little bit of the Nu period, but when he becomes Joseph Smith’s recorder, he starts another diary, and that diary uh runs from November 27th of 1842. Uh, and then it runs all the way through January 30th of 1846, but it covers 19 months of Joseph Smith’s administration. It’s covering Joseph Smith from exactly 19 months because it’s starting from, from, uh, November 27th through June 27th when Joseph. Exactly 19 months, that’s it’s super important to us. Not that the rest isn’t important, not that the Manchester diary is important, but this Novo diary, it goes beyond Joseph Smith, but man, those 19 months, I really wanna see. So, um, then there’s a third diary, uh, is really a Navo Temple record. He actually, after Joseph Smith’s killed, keeps a record for Hebrewy Kimball, and uh it covers the period maybe December 10th through January 6th. So December 10th of 1845 through January 6th, they’re doing the temple ordinances in Navvo and so he keeps that record that we call the The Will Clayton diary #3, I guess you would call it. And then the fourth diary, you know, is a neat diary. It covers the Mormon trail. It covers from Uh, when they leave Navvo, so February 8th through 1847. And then there’s still two more diaries after that. He takes a mission with Brigham Young to southern Utah, really Brigham Young’s annual vacation, winter vacation, uh, so 1852, he keeps a diary for Brigham or for himself, but I mean. The Brigham mission is covered there, the Brigham vacation. And then in 1852, you know, they, they formally announced polygamy and published the alleged revelation in Salt Lake City, and they’ve got a problem, so they’ve also printed it in in In Saint Louis, and it’s, and it’s in the newspapers and it’s traveling. So William Clayton actually uh takes off for England in 1852 on what we call the polygamy mission. And so he keeps a diary from, from 1852 to 1853 for that mission. But then going back to this Nu journal. It’s not really one journal. It’s actually 3. There are 3.

[46:53] Michelle: OK, I wanna pause. I have hoo

[46:55] John Hajicek: diary is actually 3.

[46:58] Michelle: OK, so when you say they had a problem and he went on a polygamy mission, I just wanted to specify that. Do you mean because word was getting out and they still wanted to keep it hush hush, and, and so he went or he went to say no, polygamy is

[47:13] John Hajicek: a little of both, I think. Damage. And it didn’t go that way. It didn’t go that well, but that’s another story. That’s a long story. OK,

[47:25] Michelle: OK, it’s fascinating, so much to look into. OK, so now back to the Nu diary. So this is his second diary and the one that we really, really, this is like the $10 billion diary, right? And it’s 3 diaries that so that’s where I interrupted you.

[47:42] John Hajicek: It’s three diaries and then maybe another little supplement. And it was probably, there are probably other pieces lost or hidden, we don’t know. But, uh, he starts the diary in November 20, November of 43, so November 27th of 40, no, I got that wrong. November 27th of 40. And so he, uh, you know, it’s a little white diary. It’s about, it’s what we call 16 mo. It’s probably made up of sheets of 16 pages, and there’s probably, um, in that first one, I would guess 8 gatherings, so it would be um It’d be 128 pages long. I would, I would judge. The first diary is 128 pages long. It’s about 6 inches tall, maybe 4 inches wide. Um. And

[48:33] Michelle: is it kind of like all of us, like he finishes his first diary and writes on the last page and so he starts a new one. Is that how the other diaries go?

[48:41] John Hajicek: It’s hard to tell because I can’t see the last page of I haven’t seen the last page of the first page, but it’s a little tiny ledger book. It’s got a clasp, it’s white, white Moroccan goatskin. Um, it’s got a really ledger books, so it’s got red lines running vertically and super faint, uh, blue lines going horizontally, and he writes in it until Oh, I think about the end of April of 44.

[49:12] Michelle: OK, so that is that he

[49:14] John Hajicek: changes the pen. And so one of the issues I look at is I’m not interested in a typed copy of the diary. I mean, I am, that’s all I can get. But I’m, I’m a, I’m a material culture historian. So I, I, I work with anything from sear stones to sunstones. I want to know how they’re made, what the, what the material is. I wanna know, uh, everything from Mormon. sacred spaces and temples and architecture as cultural objects, everything from those to the photographs of them taken in the mid-century vernacular photography period of 19.

[49:53] Michelle: In a way, you’re an archaeologist, you’re an archaeologist as well, kind of, but of more modern history, like seeing all of the the artifacts are are your domain.

[50:03] John Hajicek: The microscopes. I want to know what kind of ink is used, how they’re, how they’re created, what kind of, what’s in the margins. I wanna look at the ink and see if it’s layered. I wanna, I wanna understand. A chronology of of adding things to the document. And, and its whole creation process. It’s about the creation. What, what was the purpose? What was the You know, so I’m looking at these diaries, and I’m not, I’m not seeing the same thing I see when I, I probably own 1000 diaries, you know, they’re not all Mormon. Uh, they’re sometimes contextual diaries. They may have just one mention of Mormonism. But people don’t write diaries the way William Clayton did. William Clayton’s diary is pretty clean. It doesn’t, I’m not positive cause I haven’t. had the opportunity to just go through every page, but it doesn’t look to me like, like William Clayton’s diary was written. In the field, you know, as As diaries are written, they’re not written on a steamboat. They’re not written on a horse. They’re not written in a cabin, you know, they’re written in an office, and they appear to be, I think he’s written them, he’s written them in chunks, like he’s gathered other documents and then written. Dozens of pages at a time from other source documents. So he’s not sitting in a congregation writing down Joseph Smith’s sermon. He’s scribbling on some scratch paper or something. And a few weeks later, maybe he’s, he’s doing this diary. And, you know, it’s not, it’s even possible that the diaries are made much, much later, but I don’t know. It’s just too hard to tell. But I’m not real comfortable with the diaries. I’m not real comfortable, especially that they were. They certainly weren’t created. As he’s walking or or traveling with Joseph. OK.

[51:58] Michelle: So, so the critical thing about these diaries is they cover the most important 19 months of this history uh in Mormonism, especially for the discussion of polygamy, but many other things as well. And you know what they look like. Have you seen photographs of them or have they just been described?

[52:16] John Hajicek: I’ve seen photographs and all of it described

[52:19] Michelle: photographs. OK, but you have not been allowed to hold them, touch them, read them, investigate them, look at them under a microscope, any of any any actual archival work you haven’t been able to do. Right. OK, and so, so now I’m I’m I’m making sure I’m understanding what you’re saying. So for me, when I have a journal, Um, you know, sometimes maybe I’ll keep it by my bed at night, but if I was doing that with candlelight, there might occasionally be a piece of ash on it. I might occasionally spill a little bit of tea on it. It might show wear and tear from being carried in my backpack or my pocket, or, right? So you’re saying that when all of these journals you have, the diaries, you can tell that people We say, um, like Todd Compton said about Eliza Snow’s journal, you can tell that she’s writing it around the campfire that night. Sometimes their hand is tired, sometimes they’re more energetic. That’s it’s sometimes the the wordings are a little sloppier because they were on a horse or whatever, you know, like you can see real life in the pages of the journal. And that’s what a real um working diary or journal would look like as opposed to a document that is kept carefully preserved on a working desk that is written in a pristine way without crossing things out, without, you know, without the daily, um, we all know what journals look like, right? You get a thought later on like, and this is more a prepared. Document than it is a working journal. Is that, am I understanding the point you’re making?

[53:55] John Hajicek: Exactly. And it’s, it’s so that when we call when we say we have the Nabu Journal, we’re talking about three separate books. The first one I described goes through about April or May of 1843, if I remember right,

[54:11] Michelle: and then he starts.

[54:12] John Hajicek: No, it starts in 42 and it goes through uh. I might have some notes.

[54:18] Michelle: Well, let’s see. November 27th, 1842 is what you had said. 00, that’s Joseph’s, that’s that’s the journal that covers Joseph.

[54:25] John Hajicek: Yeah, the end of the end of April 1843.

[54:29] Michelle: OK.

[54:30] John Hajicek: And this, so this is a little white journal. It’s got marbled edges, red and blue, and, and you can, you can see it’s got about 128 pages. I have some experience with book construction, so I’m looking at it and I can, I can probably guess it’s about 128 pages, which would be 8 gatherings. And then the, the subsequent one is probably twice as thick. I would judge it to be about a 16 gatherings, so about 256 pages, 16 times 16.

[55:02] Michelle: OK, so his 10

[55:04] John Hajicek: go ahead. That one then runs to September of 1844. So the second one covers the, the martyrdom supposedly we would, we think. And then the third one then goes from September until um Until January 30th, just before they leave for Utah.

[55:23] Michelle: OK, so these are, so why do we call it one journal? Is it just because it’s the Navu period journal? Cause that sounds like 3

[55:29] John Hajicek: journals. It’s almost like 3 volumes of a diary, but they’re they’re really all it’s really all almost 10 separate pieces. There’s there’s also one final piece of 16 pages, just one gathering that is nobody can account for why it’s not in one of the other books, and it kind of shows you how they were, they were. Contriving this diary. It was, it was almost like a synthetic diary of, of entries that they were assembling, let’s say.

[55:58] Michelle: OK, so I’m gonna break that down.

[56:00] John Hajicek: Like in the sense of plastic, I mean synthetic, like in the sense of it’s not created on a steamboat or on a horse or in a cabin or in a You know,

[56:09] Michelle: so it’s kind of like he has his diary that he has on the steamboat, and he brings all of those things together and then and makes this more pristine diary.

[56:19] John Hajicek: And so this other little piece of 16 pages, it covers from Oh. I can’t remember, like June, like June 10th through June 22nd maybe of 1844, and there’s no explanation for why it isn’t in the other uh volume of his June of 1844 entries, or if it was meant to be tipped into the back. Maybe they used, maybe he used 256. I don’t know, nobody knows.

[56:47] Michelle: Well, so, so was that that little segment that we have, um, are those dates missing from this journal or was it?

[56:57] John Hajicek: No, I mean it’s almost like overlap. It’s it’s more like

[57:00] Michelle: so he kept two separate, he kept two separate accounts or

[57:04] John Hajicek: I don’t know,

[57:06] Michelle: but the dates he has recordings in this in this real journal for the same dates, or at least at the same time period that we have this little segment. Yeah, and

[57:14] John Hajicek: there are people that know this. You know, James Allen is a, is a 95 year old historian who’s worked with those diaries back in the 1980s or 1970s, probably starting in 1974, maybe 18, 1974. James Allen and, and uh that’s James B. Allen. He worked for the church history department. And uh his colleague, well not, uh, the founder of Signature Books, George Smith, George D. Smith was also a historian at that time. He’s about 85 now, and he worked with the diaries, but he had to work with transcripts, so he’s more like me. And um, but those guys, those guys probably know more about this than I do, but, and there’s people at the Justice Smith papers that probably know, but they’re not talking. So, well,

[57:59] Michelle: that’s what I was gonna say my

[58:01] John Hajicek: I don’t know if anybody else would tell you it’s a white diary or that, you know, the second volume is a chestnut colored diary, and the second volume does not have the red ledger lines. Like, I’ve kind of studied what these look like physically to try to understand when I think they’re created. I Oh, OK. created in Utah, but it’s, but it’s but it’s probably at best, they were created days after, weeks after the entries. And by the way, the first, that first volume from, from November of 42 through through April of 43, that volume is in just two pens, it looks like, like the first half is, is a gray pan. It looks gray, and the second half is a darker black thinner pen. It’s like he used two pens to create this diary for 6 months and and it just switches halfway through. It just doesn’t feel like It’s just my instinct. It doesn’t feel like other diaries I look at that change continuously.

[59:05] Michelle: OK, OK, so, so for so many reasons, the William Clayton diary is like a big deal. First of all, it’s never been released. My understanding is that James Allen, who was the one who got to work with it, and that’s my understanding too, and you said that he’s been really. Faithful to the church and not given us, you know, like he hasn’t, he hasn’t he, my understanding is he didn’t even really want his paper published, didn’t want it talked about, he just wanted to keep it under wraps and, and so, so based on, oh, what’s the word in law, and anyway, you can like if if if evidence is not forthcoming, we can assume that there might be a reason why, right? Like it is suspicious. That we’re not able to see these journals that causes some suspicion. And the reason it’s important to me or to us, you know, like there’s so much information, but William Clayton’s journal is considered one of the best evidences for Joseph’s polygamy, as I understand it, because we do have some transcripts from it. That claimed that Joseph that that records some of his marriages. And so that’s one of the solid contemporaneous pieces of evidence that that we use to say absolutely he was participating in polygamy. But you’re saying that you are you are suspicious that it is a motivated creation of some sort, possibly. Am I, am I saying that to, anyway, I’ll let you, I’ll let you respond to what I’ve tried to sum up if I’m getting it right.

[1:00:38] John Hajicek: Yeah, so here’s where I Struggle There’s a discourse. Of 26th of May 1844. That’s in the Joseph Smith papers. It’s compiled by Leo Hawkins. Leo Hawkins has made a copy doubtlessly because Leo Hawkins isn’t in the church in 1844. This is an 1856 document, but it’s a very moving discourse of Joseph Smith. It’s the one where he says, Um, It’s the one where he says, uh,

[1:01:15] Michelle: Is that I have rattled chains and dudges for the truth’s sake. Is it that one?

[1:01:21] John Hajicek: Yeah, he says, um, I’m the same man and innocent as I was 14 years ago. I can prove them all perjurers. Um,

[1:01:31] Michelle: Isn’t this his last public discourse that we have record of where he says, what a thing it is for a man to be accused of having 7 wives when I can only find one. That’s that.

[1:01:40] John Hajicek: Thank you. You got it. I’m trying to find that entry so I can, here it is. What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery or committing, uh, hold on. Adultery and having 7 wives when I can only find one. I’m the same man and as innocent as I was 14 years ago, and I can prove them all perjurers. Now, I wanna, I wanna call your attention to a couple of neat things in this discourse. First of all, this discourse is moving. He’s passionate. If for anybody who’s ever been accused of anything, you can feel it in this document. He is indignant, he is mad, he is innocent, and he is defensive, but he’s not too defensive like Shakespeare would say. You know, he’s not protesting too much, but he’s specifically

[1:02:24] Michelle: saying making his case. He’s he’s he’s passionately making his

[1:02:28] John Hajicek: case. He’s almost making his opening argument here before any potential trial and You know, he says, I haven’t, I, I, I’ve not been married scarcely 5 minutes. And made one proclamation of the gospel before I, before it had been reported. I had 7 wives. You know, that’s talking about 1827 when he marries Emma. He’s already being accused of polygamy in 1827. But what I really love about this document. Yeah, yeah, more of what you just said, uh, a man. This new holy prophet, William Law has gone to Carthage and swore that I had told him I was guilty of adultery, the spiritual wifeism, why a a man dares not speak or wink for fear, for fear of being accused of this. Well, notice that William Law is swearing. He’s making affidavits. This is just like in the 1880s when you get the affidavits. But what Joseph Smith says in this document that’s so moving to me is when he says, God is in the still small voice. In all these affidavits, indictments, it is all of the devil. All corruption, come on ye prosecutors, ye false swearers. I don’t understand how a historian can read that and then say, but we have an affidavit in the 1880s that says he was a polygamist. And you would take that affidavit over this. I mean, Joseph Smith is just extraordinary in here, but here’s what I’m getting at with how this connects for me with the William Clayton diaries. It’s this this paragraph. For the last 3 years, This is how he’s gonna prove he’s innocent, OK. Joe says I’m gonna prove myself innocent, and this is how for the last 3 years, I have kept a record of all my accent proceedings. For I have kept several good, faithful, and efficient clerks in constant employee. And they have accompanied me everywhere and carefully kept my history. And they have written down what I have done, where I have been, and what I have said. They cannot charge me, therefore my enemies cannot charge me with any day or time or place, but what I have written testimony to prove my actions, and my enemies, for they cannot prove anything against me. So what was the purpose of William Clayton’s diary? The purpose of William Clayton’s diary was to exonerate Joseph Smith of polygamy. It’s not that there’s polygamy in the diary, it’s that there are entries in that diary. If that diary is authentic, there’s only two possibilities. Either that diary is authentic. And it exonerates Joseph Smith of polygamy. Or William Clayton was one of the perjurers who was creating the diary, and Joseph Smith alludes to. So either, either just either that diary has exculpatory evidence that would exonerate Joseph Smith at trial. And there should be 4, by the way. Joseph Smith has got like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He’s got people recording to testify for him.

[1:05:51] Michelle: So, oh, so we don’t have these journals. These should all be there.

[1:05:55] John Hajicek: The William Clayton diaries were created for the purpose of exonerating Joseph Smith against the, that’s what Joseph is saying. They’re created to exonerate me from the charge of polygamy. So if William Clayton is writing in there, things like, like William Clayton writes that he married his two sis, the two sisters. He married Ruth Moon and then he married Margaret Moon, and then he wanted to marry Lydia Moon, the mother. And he writes in the diary that Joseph Smith objected because Joseph wanted to marry Lydia, the mother. So William Clayton is either If that’s in there, William Clayton, and that’s actually in 1844 entry, then William Clayton wrote it in 1844 for the purpose of getting Joseph Smith indicted.

[1:06:41] Michelle: OK, so that was. OK, so that was my thought. So this, this kind of pristine journal that he’s writing on a desk while he’s keeping other notes somewhere else, like what you’re hypothesizing it which and and I know that even if this sounds extreme to people, we have to know there were conspirators like I think that William Law started his journal for the same purpose to try to Keep a record against Joseph and and so so it’s completely possible that William Clayton was sort of manufacturing an alternative journal to justify his polygamy as having come through Joseph. Is is what that is one of the options. So either there’s a journal when William Clayton was following Joseph around for real, that would exonerate Joseph, or this more carefully crafted journal is an attempt to frame Joseph.

[1:07:41] John Hajicek: Right. They’re either framing Joseph, or they’re exonerating Joseph, and Joseph says he’s not guilty of polygamy and he’s got scribes and clerks that are gonna help him prove it. In the meantime, William Clayton is writing in his diary and and William Law or they’re writing in their diaries that Joseph Smith is making these statements, but they’re just these little innuendos and and short little things. There’s no, hey, I attended the 50th wedding today, or the 40th wedding or the 38th wedding or the 33rd wedding, depending on which. New Mormon historian and you ask, but there’s no 50 weddings that William Clayton goes to. There’s just these little, you know, Joseph and I were arguing about who is gonna get Lydia, Lydia Moon. I don’t.

[1:08:29] Michelle: OK, I have so many questions. So, so the, the, the, um, speech you just were referring to and just reading from the, um, May 26th, I think 1844, that it was recorded by Thomas Bullock, did you say? And or?

[1:08:45] John Hajicek: No, this is Leo Hawkins. It’s a

[1:08:47] Michelle: Leo Hawkins.

[1:08:48] John Hajicek: OK. It might come out of George A. Smith’s journal, which I’ve seen but which other historians are not aware of. It’s in private hands.

[1:08:58] Michelle: Uh, so you would, we would think that William Clayton would be recording Joseph’s sermons in his journals, and we don’t have the account of that sermon in William Clayton’s journal, like we are using this other one instead.

[1:09:14] John Hajicek: The earliest copy we have is 1856, right. So that there’s other, there’s other people too, you know, just think of how many scribes there were. You’ve got You’ve got James Sloan, James Whitehead, you’ve got Willard Richards, um, we can’t see his diary either. Uh, we can see some of. Uh, we’ve got, um, oh, I’ve made a list last night of just off the top of my head how many scribes Joseph had. Um,

[1:09:44] Michelle: OK, so what I just talked about in the episode I did on um the RLDS is when he says to William Marks about polygamy, I have been I have been deceived, and I think William Marks, my opinion is he misunderstood that to think Joseph was saying I’ve been deceived about polygamy. I think what he was saying was I have been deceived by these people that I trusted. Like William Clayton to be my scribe or like my leaders of the elders quorum, do you know what I mean? So we, and we know that Joseph Es speeches said that his friends were conspiring to take his life, right? And so I just want, want to like this might seem to some people, I mean it is a conspiracy. We are conspiracy theorists because this world has conspiracies when people, right, right, like, so, so what we are saying, we know that William Clayton. Had these sisters at least, right? Margaret and Ruth Moon, his wife’s sister and. So he very possibly could have been and his journal is not a working journal. It does not look like all of the other journals look. We have not been given access to anything to be able to dig into it. So, so if so and Joseph was the one who assigned them to keep Journals so he could say I’m not a polygamist. Joseph’s entire reason for saying I want these scribes to follow me around and keep my journal was so that he could verify that he was not a polygamist. You’ll take

[1:11:18] John Hajicek: a guy like Brian Hailes, yes, and the argument is we don’t have any polygamy documents because they were commanded to burn them. Yeah, but yet, Joseph Smith’s scribes are supposed to be following him around to record that he was polygamist.

[1:11:35] Michelle: That would be what would exonerate him.

[1:11:37] John Hajicek: Right, he’s getting, he’s getting exonerated. You would think if that, if, if William Clayton’s diary was faked, that it would that it would that Brian Hailes would argue would make the argument that um. That Joseph Smith was a polygamist and and William Clayton faked a diary to say he wasn’t. Like, why is William Clayton writing things down that can get can put get Joseph Smith put in prison.

[1:12:06] Michelle: So Joseph, the entire reason he had people follow him around to keep a diary for him from his own speech was to say, I’m not a polygamist, and we have James Whitehead and a few other diarists, well, at least James Whitehead saying, I kept a diary and he had no other wives. No other woman came and asked for money, no other woman had records that you like I saw him and Emma as husband and wife, and no other, so we have other people keeping diaries that can attest to that. Bullock.

[1:12:38] John Hajicek: Where are these diaries that exonerate Joseph Smith? Are there any?

[1:12:42] Michelle: Right, so either those were destroyed, either those were destroyed by the conspirators painting him as a polygamist, or they’re being kept under lock and key. And because we know that there was there were revisions done to history. We know that they were trying to, you know, I’m I’m going to get into that more and more. So, so by Joseph Smith’s own testimony of why he had people following him around, his entire purpose was to prove that he was not a participating in polygamy. So there is no logical reason that William Clayton would have a valid diary recording anything about polygamy. Right.

[1:13:22] John Hajicek: It’s either way. It’s wrong either way.

[1:13:26] Michelle: Wow, OK, so either it’s being kept under lock and key because it would exonerate him and we want all the other diaries as well. They either Joseph himself testified that he had these diaries kept. They either were destroyed. Or they’re being hidden. They’re being kept because they would exonerate him or on the other hand. And and then the one that we do have that does exist that we do know about is most the one that does implicate him in polygamy is too beautiful of a it’s a created um.

[1:13:57] John Hajicek: It’s certainly an office journal. It’s an office journal at best, right? Maybe even a fair copy, meaning they prepared it for other purposes later, copying from the first.

[1:14:08] Michelle: And in any case, Joseph would absolutely not have approved of it or avowed it. He would have not said, yes, that is my actual journal. See, OK, I’m I’m sorry, I’m I’m my brain is doing all these things cause also we claim that all of the documents were burned and there are no records cause they couldn’t keep them cause it was illegal and we see all that while at the same time there’s this journal being kept that does record polygamist information like how does that make any sense? Oh my gosh, you’ve blown my mind. OK, this is really cool. So thank you for help for taking the time to help me really understand what you have put together. That is fascinating. This conspiracy was deep and people were up to it were into it up to their eyeballs. OK. So, OK,

[1:14:57] John Hajicek: I’m equally uncomfortable with WW Phelps and and Willard Richards. Mhm. OK,

[1:15:03] Michelle: do you have any

[1:15:03] John Hajicek: podcasts? Well, I mean, I buy documents from these guys, you know, this is uh There’s Fels acting as a recorder for Joseph.

[1:15:16] Michelle: So you know personally their handwriting, their style,

[1:15:19] John Hajicek: yeah, yeah, I can show you documents from, you know, William Clayton as a reporter.

[1:15:26] Michelle: And what you’re holding up, this is amazing. I wish I were there because this isn’t the Joseph Smith’s papers. You’re this is the actual document. I, I mean, I mean, we’re not just seeing pictures of them. These are the originals.

[1:15:39] John Hajicek: Well, these are Clayton’s own, uh own papers from his own, some of them.

[1:15:45] Michelle: OK, so

[1:15:46] John Hajicek: this is a this is a letter addressed to Willing Clayton.

[1:15:49] Michelle: While you’re holding this up, he’s doing

[1:15:51] John Hajicek: a lot of recordings. So William Clayton does, you know, 1000 documents. I don’t even get the whole William Clayton thing because William Clayton did not have great handwriting, neither did Willard Richards. These guys got into the confidence of Joseph Smith a lot like WW Phelps did. You know, WW Phelps got the press destroyed in Independence. He got the Book of Commandments destroyed. He said things in the, in the church newspaper that were. So

[1:16:18] Michelle: is he? WW Phelps sort of was the one that kind of framed Joseph for like he, he convinced Joseph to destroy the press and then also possibly informed the authorities that yeah so I’m not I’m still in Missouri,

[1:16:32] John Hajicek: so in 1838, he gets Joseph Smith. Put in the Liberty Jail. I mean, how do you get will Joseph Smith put in the Liberty jail and then still like snake your way into Joseph Smith’s confidence again in Navvo and then get him put into Carthage jail and be there on the day of the martyrdom. And, and then have all this, I mean that’s a whole other, that’s a whole episode. William Clayton is uh OK. Person long before he played the devil in the temple, but

[1:17:04] Michelle: OK, so let me ask, let me ask you this. So you, with your like depth of, of um Of understanding of who Joseph was like you were able to just just by reading Mark Hoffman’s documents, you were like, that’s not Joseph. You just knew that wasn’t Joseph. So you really are well acquainted with him. Do and and you just read his um May twenty-sixth impassioned sermon. Do you think that Joseph was having, you know, was telling William Clayton, it’s your privilege to have as many wives as you want. Do you do like, like my understanding of who Joseph is, how I finally kind of came to this was studying Emma and Joseph and their lives, and then also looking at how Joseph, I, I am convinced Joseph genuinely believed his revelations and did his best to live them. What what God revealed to Joseph, he tried to implement and tried to obey. So when I look at 132, it like I’m not as familiar with Joseph as you are, but it certainly doesn’t sound like Joseph to me, and he completely ignored it and didn’t live according to it at all, right? And so I guess my question, sorry, it was a very loaded question. I didn’t mean to go off. I just, I get a little impassioned as well. Do you think 132 is Joseph Smith? Do you think Joseph was practicing polygamy, trying to keep it secret, making secret deals with like, like using Heresy Kimball’s daughter Helen to seal them to get. Do you, do you, does this ring true to you all these later testimonies and affidavits of what Joseph was doing on the sly? Is that who Joseph was?

[1:18:46] John Hajicek: No. Yeah

[1:18:48] Michelle: That’s it. OK.

[1:18:51] John Hajicek: Um, 132, and, you know, that’s not, it doesn’t ring true. It doesn’t ring like Joseph Smith’s voice. It doesn’t ring like Joseph Smith’s revelations. It’s not, uh, it doesn’t have the correct historical context. It, uh, obviously we don’t have a contemporary copy. We have the, the Kingsbury copy. It’s the best we can do. Um, I’m not buying it, but you know, my job is to be a skeptic, so I You know, if that had turned up in any other era, you know, you would tell a rare book depository not to buy that. You wouldn’t a repository. You wouldn’t, you you you tell somebody to buy that document. I would tell them it’s not authentic. It’s

[1:19:34] Michelle: OK.

[1:19:35] John Hajicek: It’s not an, it’s not a genuine Nu document.

[1:19:38] Michelle: OK, so, OK, so if, if you had had the ear of the church leaders in 1981 or 1980, you would have been saying to them, nope, don’t, those, those are forgeries, don’t buy those. I

[1:19:50] John Hajicek: thought we were talking about, but yeah,

[1:19:52] Michelle: I know I’m making a comparison. I’m saying that in 1980 you would have told them. No, don’t buy that. And if you can, and, and, and you’re doing the same thing if you had the ear of anyone now just in the same way you would say, no, that’s not a genuine.

[1:20:05] John Hajicek: But I’d say the same thing about the Leo Hawkins sermon. The Leo Hawkins sermon is not a genuine Nu document, but it does ring in the voice of Joseph Smith, to use that word again. It, it sounds like Joseph Smith. If you spend, and I’m sure any other person in the Joseph Smith papers project would agree, this doesn’t seem. Uh, the Leo Hawkins document, which probably comes from George A. Smith, is not a, it doesn’t sound like a folk document. It’s not folklore, it’s not a Victorian storytelling document. It’s a likely uh early copy of a of a genuine document.

[1:20:41] Michelle: Well, and also nobody can, I think that everyone agrees with you. I’ve never heard that contested. I’ve I’ve heard, I hear it explained away as a carefully worded denial, which I think is ludicrous, but I’ve never heard anyone say no, Joseph didn’t say that it’s a forgery because there’s no, so, so I guess what I’m saying is. We can take the Leo Hawkins document and say, yes, this is, this is valid, Joseph Smith. From everything we know of Joseph Smith, this sounds like him. It’s got the ring. We can see, say where it probably came from. It’d be, it’d be great if we could get an earlier copy of it, but in, but we have no reason to doubt this is Joseph Smith, whereas 132 does not pass that test.

[1:21:20] John Hajicek: Correct. But that’s a subjective uh a subjective opinion. My, my. You know, I’d like to be able to just say that’s not a genuine novel document. But my subjective opinion, having, so that’s an objective opinion, we know it’s not an Au document. Um, Subjectively, we can say, and it doesn’t sound like Joseph Smith at all.

[1:21:47] Michelle: Right, and I, I’m aware that I’m asking you for your subjective opinion, but I’m doing it as possibly the greatest expert we know of of Joseph Smith’s voice and Joseph Smith’s writings, and I don’t know anyone else that can quote line and verse of the times and seasons for the entire history of the church. So I’m saying you

[1:22:05] John Hajicek: are Joseph Smiths are really good historians. I just don’t think they have the academic freedom. To do this kind of work or maybe they’re in the new Mormon history school of thought, but there, but there are better historians than me. But thank you, that’s so nice.

[1:22:22] Michelle: Well, let’s take a minute to talk about this new Mormon historian, um, as you are talking about it. So can you explain what you mean by that? I mean, I know we have the term, but how are you using the term new Mormon historian and let’s kind of talk about that cause the Mormon his the nor Mormon narrative right now is very much that. God did want polygamy. Now he doesn’t want polygamy, but we still believe it kind of depending on who you talk to. Anyway, so, so our historians, you’re talking about, are you including Brian Hailes? Are you including, um, why is my blank brain going blank? Rough stone rolling, um, Bushman, are you like who are you including in that? Is it the entire historical department? And can you define what you mean by it? OK, so you were telling me that the new Mormon history started in about 1902, or at least that school of thought, and I also want you to, I also want you to explain what that school of thought is. I want you to tell me what, what they mean by it or what you mean by it.

[1:23:29] John Hajicek: So let me let me make sure it’s clear, these are really good historians. This is just a school of thought, and in scholarship and academia, people develop new traditions and new historiology type. Techniques, and this is just a technique that that developed in kind of almost it’s probably not completely unique to Mormonism, but in Mormon history, you had a real protagonist, antagonist. Uh, dualism taking place, and people wanted to make their books more credible, so they wanted to say that, uh, our book is impartial, that’s just marketing, right? Again, it’s like essential oils, like, what a great marketing phrase, essential oils or common sense gun control. Who can disagree? Who can disagree with a phrase like new Mormon history? Um, that’s what they thought. And so they coined that term at the late mid-century, maybe 1966, I don’t know, maybe 1970, and it was the Richard Bushman camp. Now, again, he’s the patron of Mormon history. He’s good. He knows his material. He’s Very well credentialed, um, at the university, you know, level, but I would argue he’s sort of a Cubiccle and classroom historian, where I’m a document historian, I’m a material culture historian. I’m out digging sunstones out of the mud, and he’s teaching class classes

[1:25:04] Michelle: and reading papers. But I’m just a hands-on grittiness of Of like you have the physical do the, the, the physical side of it, I guess, the more like hands on I know what this is side of it that

[1:25:17] John Hajicek: that’s yeah, so, so we live in a flat screen society where people will decide if a daguerre type purporting to be Joseph Smith is Joseph Smith by by looking at it on a flat screen. They look at all their Mormon history at a flat screen, and they write their Mormon history. Uh, using documents on flat screens. So, you, they, and it’s, by the way, it’s unethical. It’s unethical to take a type script of the New York Tribune from July 8th. 1844, and cite it and say you looked at it if you’re only looking at a typed copy on the internet, or even if you’re, even if you’re using a microfilm copy, it should be stated what media you looked at. If you didn’t look at the New York Tribune, you didn’t look at the New York Tribune, right? But that’s how Mormon history is decided. So you don’t look at the Daguerro type to decide if it’s an authentic Daguro type, you simply say, looks like Joseph Smith to me. And I don’t know why a historian, like say Ben Park, would, or I don’t know why that, I don’t know why the Salt Lake Tribune would interview Ben Park for his opinion on whether that’s a deguro type if he hadn’t ever seen it. You know, so that’s kind of how Mormon history is done. You can look at a picture of Joseph Smith and say, well, I’m a, I’m a PhD credential historian. I’ve written a book about Navuo. You know, I, uh, my, my opinion is valued, uh, one would say, uh, because of your credentials, um, but I disagree. I think you have to look at things as objects. I want to see these documents as objects. I want to see 132. I want to see it. You know, at least William Clayton’s handwriting, we don’t even have that in William Clayton’s handwriting.

[1:27:00] Michelle: So so you, you bring to it. Oh, this is what I’m trying, what I’m hearing. There’s the question of authentication as well as many other things. And so, so it’s what I’m what I’m hearing is like, here’s a deguro type, someone says it’s a deguro type, then it’s accepted as a daguro type, and no one’s allowed to ask that question again. So we just do our history based on one person’s maybe not that well informed opinion that that’s a deguro type, then it’s accepted and it becomes factual. And so what you’re saying is you want to do the actual work of going. Is there a Mark Hoffman forgery in here? Is this a forgery by someone else? It’s not even just a forgery, but like, like what, what can I find out that you wanna look at it as someone trying to find forgeries, but, but much more beyond that, trying to get a sense of what’s going on here in a bigger picture than just saying, oh this is what this says, this is what this says, this is. What this says it’s accepted, so it’s accepted, and we don’t even know who was the who, how we are, we’re not, we’re not welcomed into that process of deciding what should be accepted on what terms.

[1:28:05] John Hajicek: Right. But but it’s, it’s not just whether or not it’s an authentic document. So 132 is not an authentic Navo document. That doesn’t mean it’s a well it is a forgery, but uh the Hoffman things are forgeries, but, but. You know, when we’re looking at the diaries of William Clayton from Nuvo, those three journals. Uh, or all the journals, 9 or 10, um, we’re, we’re looking at them not just to see whether or not they’re authentic, but we’re looking at them to see for what purpose they were created, when they were created, how they were edited, how they were altered, how they were preserved, what, uh, the provenance is, what, you know, we were looking for context.

[1:28:44] Michelle: We’re being detectives more than just historians because we’re saying what was the motive here, what was the manner in which it was done, what was the purpose that served if someone had a purpose, so, so we’re not saying did William Clayton really write this journal in 1844? That’s not the question. The question is. Is what William wrote in this journal in 1844 a true record of what Joseph Smith did?

[1:29:09] John Hajicek: That’s right. Well, he might, he might have written it in 1847. I, it’s not a forgery, but he might have written it himself in 1847. He might have written it in 1845. He might have written it in July of 1844. It, it, we have to understand how that, how that was created. But the problem with the new Mormon historians is the new Mormon historians are very flat in their assessment. And the reason is, is that they Wanted to take that. Protagonist, antagonist dualism, and they wanted to uh accept all viewpoints. So it’s the, it’s the, it’s the idea of almost like a Wikipedia article where you’re trying to create a consensus and everybody can come in and edit until, until the dust settles, and you have, you have a synthesized consensus of what most Uh, what, what, what the generally accepted or widely accepted viewpoint of each thing is. So it’s where you get, um, Richard Bushman saying that Joseph Smith used both a seer stone and a Yerman Thummim and no tool at all at 3 different parts, 3 different stages of the translation of the Book of Mormon.

[1:30:19] Michelle: Because that’s because he’s got

[1:30:22] John Hajicek: to take account and he’s got them all because he’s not allowed in their school of thought, you’re not allowed to say that’s anti-Mormon, we don’t believe that. But when you, but that’s a slippery slope. So once you start saying that, you can’t really dismiss. You can’t except if there’s sometimes if there’s a conflict, you might take a Utah-centric viewpoint. So if you’ve got Eliza R. Snow. Uh, juxtaposed against Emma Smith, then you’re gonna take the Eliza Snow, you’re gonna take the U Utah Center, by the way, I love this. I found this last night reading, uh, in the Justice Smith papers. I don’t know if people are generally aware of this, but you’ll enjoy this. This is a poem from Eliza R. Snow, the 12th of October 1842. Did you know she wrote Justice Smith a poem?

[1:31:12] Michelle: I’ve heard about this, OK?

[1:31:15] John Hajicek: She secretly married Joseph. In June of 1842, but in July 1000 female members of the church signed an affidavit saying Joseph Smith isn’t teaching polygamy, and in October, uh she publishes a certificate that denounces polygamy and denies Joseph Smith’s. But those we kind of know about that, but I didn’t know about this poem. There’s a lot I don’t know. This poem is great. She’s actually writing to Joseph Smith and she addresses him as President Smith. How is she his wife? I don’t know. In October October of 1842,

[1:31:53] Michelle: so read the poem.

[1:31:56] John Hajicek: Oh, the poem’s not that great. It’s not worth reading.

[1:31:59] Michelle: OK. OK.

[1:32:02] John Hajicek: It’s the manuscript of it exists in the Joseph Smith papers and so it’s 4 months after she’s married to Joseph Smith, and she’s just writing, writing in presidential poetry addressed to,

[1:32:12] Michelle: it’s not a, it’s when you say a poem that makes us a love poem. It’s a very, OK, it’s it’s, it’s,

[1:32:21] John Hajicek: in fact, she writes about Emma. She says, she says, uh, President Smith, sir, for your consolation, permit me to tell. That your Emma is better, she soon shall be well. And then she goes on and she says, um, then pray for your Emma, but indulge not a fear for the God of our forefathers smiles on us here. So she’s writing to Joseph about Emma, didn’t. Didn’t she Emma down the stairs, or was that her or

[1:32:49] Michelle: vice versa, right, OK,

[1:32:52] John Hajicek: I’m not a polygamy historian because just so fair warning, I’m not an expert in things that happened after. July 27, 1844 and almost everything about polygamy comes after it’s all these affidavits, and I just I just never paid any attention to them. I immersed myself in the in the Joseph Smith documents and the And the, you know, the times and seasons of the church periodicals and things. So I didn’t, uh, OK, I don’t know a whole lot about Eliza Arsenal, but I do know that the watch she showed around was not, I, I, I always want to make that clear to people, was not a gift from Joseph Smith. She just took that off the relief society table. It was a man’s watch. It was Joseph’s watch. It wasn’t like a, like a romantic. You know, when she would show that all all over Utah and say, I’ve a watch from Joseph Smith. She, it wasn’t a gift from Joseph Smith. She just, Joseph Smith left it at the relief Society meeting where they were keeping time, and she took it and never gave it back. Apparently never had an opportunity to give it back from 1842 to 1844.

[1:34:00] Michelle: OK, so I wanna know how you know that. Is that in a document somewhere?

[1:34:05] John Hajicek: Yeah, you have to kind of parse through her her speeches about it, and you realize that she’s talking about a watch she took, not a watch that she got as a gift. It’s a man’s watch. It’s Joseph Smith’s watch.

[1:34:17] Michelle: OK, there is so much to learn to dig into. So, OK, I have to back up to your new Mormon history, so I remember to ask my questions. So I want to redefine it for you and you tell me if I’ve got if I’ve gotten it right. So what I’m understanding is the pitfalls of history are either that we’re doing a very biased history, so we’re doing like either a whitewash or we’re trying to prove a case through our historical work. And then to try to counter that, they say no we’re going to be unbiased, which means we’re going to treat each source fairly and and we’re not trying to use history to make a religious case or whatever other case we’re trying to make. But the danger on that is then you all of a sudden lose any ability to either prior. or to, you know, then all of a sudden the danger is everything is valid and everything is true and we accept it all at face value. And so the problem there is because that’s kind of my approach has been I want to get in and understand who these people are and from every source I can find that is not disputed, that is firsthand. And then put myself in their shoes the best I can and say what’s going on? Like that’s really what I was doing with Emma and seeing the letters she was writing to Joseph. And if these things were true, she would not be writing those letters to Joseph for one example, you know, and so I think that there is absolutely, absolutely, but that’s what I mean. The love story tells a very different story than and you know the. Like I call it the crazy Emma narrative that was, that was not how she was viewed in Navu. She wasn’t this crazy mentally ill, unstable,

[1:35:53] John Hajicek: elegant. Emma was elegant and sophisticated, but look,

[1:35:57] Michelle: highly respected

[1:35:59] John Hajicek: folklore is actually a thing, you know, there are universities that have departments. I think even BYU has a has a honorary professorship or something. Maybe there’s an associate professor down there that I mean, they have people that work with folklore, but they don’t stop and think about this as folklore. They might think of some parts of Mormon history as folklore, like, did, did um did Cain visit uh David W. Patton might be folklore. You know, but they don’t understand what’s happening in Utah is there’s a body of folklore. And by the way, you know, using uh prep uh presentism, you know, to try to, to try to understand, uh, ethics, literary ethics in the in the Victorian age. The Victorian age had a storytelling. Uh, part to it. That’s how things were shared. That’s how you persuaded people. And so the ethics, I, I mean, I love, believe it or not, I love Eliza Snow. I mean, she, I love her family. I love the story. I love that she’s Italian. I love so much about her. I just think, I

[1:37:10] Michelle: think she’s brilliant. She’s,

[1:37:12] John Hajicek: she loves her brothers and I love her brother Lorenzo, so that isn’t what it is. I don’t, I don’t think of her as A dishonest person, I think of her as a storyteller. She’s part, and it’s OK then. So that’s what they did in that in that period when Queen Victoria was queen, uh, for that, especially the last 60 years of the 19th century, and, and peeing there in the same time they’re signing those affidavits, it was OK to tell a story if you knew you were right.

[1:37:47] Michelle: OK, well, that’s what

[1:37:49] John Hajicek: it

[1:37:49] Michelle: is

[1:37:49] John Hajicek: is a good thing, so I’m gonna say that Joseph Smith was my husband, and then my friends and family will accept it, and that’s considered, that was actually socially acceptable.

[1:38:01] Michelle: OK, that’s, that’s what I was going to say. That’s the same thing the way I’ve been approaching it. We are the ones putting this literalness onto it when what they were doing, I think was saying like I can see being told we need to protect the kingdom. Polygamy is true. Joseph was a polygamist, but we need you to claim, we need, we need you to help us prove this case. So the moral thing to do would be to. Obey. You had covenanted to obey your husband. Your prophet husband told you that God needed you to do this. You’re going to do it from a from a moral place thinking that was the moral thing to do. And so it’s our mistake as like sort of our present mistake. is thinking that their writing is the same as what we mean. We mean literally factually true, not trying to prove a case. And so it’s good. I think it’s good to be unbiased, you know, I, I think we, I try to minimize my um motivated reasoning as much as possible, try to recognize it and You know, but there is still a case for discernment to say this document makes the most sense in this way, this makes, you know, and, and at least to present that in your, in your writing to say we have this claim, we have this claim, not this is the story of Joseph Smith, which includes all of those claims and just presented as factually true that he used. Is that what is that what you’re saying?

[1:39:26] John Hajicek: Yeah, and I just think that that Mormon folklore needs to be embraced. I think that the church would actually have an out that way, uh, because we’ve added this. I start to add as a social experiment and you look, there are 100 books, 100 thick books about polygamy written between between 1842 and 1902. There’s a a rich body of folk literature and storytelling and newspaper, um uh columnists, uh correspondents that are visiting Utah besides that, and I mean, such a rich story of the, the. The women’s studies, uh, women’s experience in Utah, women’s experience with polygamy, but they’re storytelling on both, on both sides. And you, you have to not be ashamed of it, but embrace it. It’s a, it’s a important part of our culture. I don’t, I don’t think that people should be ashamed, be ashamed of Mormon polygamy. I think it’s a, the Utah story is a great story, but, you know, but Section 132 isn’t an authentic document.

[1:40:34] Michelle: OK, OK, that’s, and, and we get in our own way because we still have, I think I agree with you that it’s just embracing we, we just, I think we get in our own way because we have this, the prophet can never lead us astray, so we need to have, you know, we need somehow we could throw out all of all of Brigham Young’s other teachings or, you know, his unique doctrines. We’ve, we’ve discarded all of those and yet for some reason it’s harder for us to. Like I.

[1:41:03] John Hajicek: This is not my house, but I have oil paintings of Brigham Young and John Taylor made while they were alive. They sat for the portraits, you know, I love Brigham Young and John Taylor. I just love them as as historic figures and in the context that I love them. I, I think that they That they had a level of sincerity in. In certain ways, I don’t, I don’t. They can’t get rid of Brigham Young. You have to, you have to love that part of our history because it’s our culture. I don’t think that this, these things we’re talking about are things that people should leave any church for. I think that they’re, that they’re problems, but I think that we can love our, we can love the mistakes in our history and the way that I would love Thomas Jefferson, despite his romantic relationship with one of his servants, uh, one of his slaves.

[1:41:56] Michelle: Which is still up for grabs. I have to throw in because people are gonna are gonna come and say that’s not true so

[1:42:02] John Hajicek: what I’m saying is it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter to me. I’m gonna, I’m gonna love liberty and freedom and independence and privacy, and I’m gonna love Thomas Jefferson. And I’m gonna love Young and I’m gonna love John Taylor, and I even love William Clayton. I brought some of his hymns with me today.

[1:42:21] Michelle: OK, what is so, so, and I just, just building on what you were saying, I completely agree with you. I think that um. I actually love seeing how God is is doing constant course corrections. We did get rid of polygamy that did fulfill the prophecies of stopping the persecutions that the states had suffered the whole time they were living it. We did like we do, we God is still working with His people in all of the different. Um, places that he’s planted us, right? I include you in that. Like I think that we all are the inheritors of this beautiful legacy that God restored through Joseph Smith and, and so I don’t think we have to, I think that this all or nothing thinking is a mistake. that often, but seeing that that polygamy was never true and that there was this, I mean was never of God and that there was this conspiracy does not mean therefore, throw it all out. I, I don’t think that at all. There’s a lot of beauty and goodness and truth that is worth preserving.

[1:43:20] John Hajicek: So what’s happening in is there’s a camp of people that are polygamy. And there, there’s a struggle over polygamy in Navu, and there are people that rise in leadership that have a history in some of the I went on so many tangents. I’m so sorry, but I was talking about the restoration, uh, that was taking place in Vermont for 25 years and in western New York. We call that, or they called it then, or we called it then the Burnt District. Now they call it the burned over district, but the burnt district was part of that. Uh, Alexander Campbell and Sydney Rigdon and Kirtland were part of that. And, and so in that, in that tradition or that, you know, we were, we were. struggling with the, the traditional religions of the Baptists and the Presbyterians, and the, and the Methodists and the congregationalists. Um, they were coming out of those traditions in Vermont and Massachusetts, and they were, they were Discovering that they could learn for themselves like we’re learning now, and, and they’re doing this in Western New York, so they call it the burnt district. There’s lots of revivals until there’s nobody left to convert, right? Um, but, but some of those people in that restoration thing, that’s all the way from Maine through Vermont, all the way to Kentucky, some of those people were polygamists. And so this, when you get together a whole lot of people who don’t want to be Baptist, Presbyterians, or congregationists, or even Unitarians or, or, or uh congregationalists. gonna get people that are thinking for themselves. And when people think for themselves, they’re gonna say, well, why can’t we have polygamy? Why can’t we have a temple? So you’re gonna see some parallels in Mormonism and other groups that are gonna range from, from Maine to um Kentucky and certainly in Western New York in that burnt district. And so, uh, then when you have the struggle in Navu, you have to look at it like a business historian would look at the history of American businesses. You have a first generation entrepreneur, somebody like Elon Musk. Joseph Smith is like Elon. Musk, OK? And he’s partners with the Whitmer, so you have two family partnerships. You’ve got two founding families. You’ve got a founding father, two founding fathers, Father Whitmer and Father Smith, and you’ve got 2 founding mothers, you know, Mother Whitmer and mother. Did I say that already mother, mother, father, they call them. That’s what they called them. And so the Whitmers kind of get pushed out and then it’s the Smiths and then they push the Smiths out a lot like you will see, eventually, Elon Musk get pushed out. People, the first generation creative, uh, people as a business model. Are like Joseph Smith as in his prophetic role. And I think that the people that came along, that came from England with, with, uh, Hebrew C. Kimball, John Taylor, Brigham Young, uh, Willard Richards, you know, they, they are the, they’re like the MBAs that come and take over the family owned business. OK, not that I’m saying the church was a business. That’s not what I mean at all, just a comparison cultural how how how humans uh uh. Reacting culture, you’re, you’re seeing a second generation of people, a second management generation come in and think that Joseph Smith needs to shut up. And they, they, they, it’s a coup. They take over the church and they, and they bring with it their ideas about polygamy, which weren’t universal in the church, but weren’t unique to just one person. It was a movement of lots of polygamists that had come into the church that we know were, were already in Kirtland or the revelation, or the, sorry, the section on marriage, uh, wouldn’t have been written the way it was written.

[1:47:08] Michelle: OK, and, and like, like it’s so interesting to me because we use these claims of someone read it, I, I, I think there were things circulating in, well, in Navvo for sure that, you know, that people were like people we know that people were claiming Joseph said this, so we shouldn’t be that surprised that there are testimonies saying Joseph said like and like you said, a lot of these like the candle lights were experimenting with this. It was happening. It would have been bleeding in. People were coming from different. The Cochranites, sorry, yep. It was, it was coming from different groups. So, OK, so I want you to. Show us your hymn book that you, you, you have like, I, I don’t know what you were able to bring, but I know that you have some of your stuff. I just

[1:47:51] John Hajicek: don’t like some of these guys as well as, I mean, I love them as historic figures, but, you know, WW Phelps bothers me a lot. William Clayton, Willie Richards, they bother me more probably than anybody else, um.

[1:48:06] Michelle: You mean you think they’re dishonest and you should look

[1:48:09] John Hajicek: at the, you should look at the the the um the council of 50 minute book and look at the handwriting of Lucian Foster. He’s, by the way, the person they think some people think did the Deguro type of Joseph Smith. He comes, he leaves Navo just before the death of Joseph Smith to bring Deguro type. Equipment back to Navo, probably to photograph Joseph, but he comes back too late and Joseph is dead. But he’s an incredibly, his handwriting, oh my gosh, you want to see what a clerk, he was a professional clerk and bookkeeper and recorder and professionally in New York, and that’s what handwriting is supposed to look like. I don’t know why Willard Richards and And William Clayton thought of themselves as clerks, and by the way, I don’t know how William Clayton supported 10 wives. He’s a clerk. How does he so, where did he get the money? Like who paid him? Who paid him to I don’t know. I don’t know why. OK, I like to be nice. So William Clayton, when he’s leaving, so he writes this, this, this, what is the fourth diary is his, is his Mormon trail diary. And he wouldn’t have numbered these like this. He probably had diaries going back to the time he was a teenager till till he died in 1879 at age 65. So he probably had other diaries too yet. But so he’s writing this this Mormon diary and he um And and he’s leaving Navo. He eventually they, you know, they get to um. They get to Council Bluffs, and he, and he, uh, or Florence, and he creates this um this odometer. I have that odometer. I didn’t bring it cause I couldn’t get it in my suitcase when I was coming out here, but I Let me have a copy of it. You can look at my Facebook. Anybody who wants to see a colored photo of that can look at my Facebook.

[1:50:09] Michelle: And you have the actual odometer.

[1:50:11] John Hajicek: I have the original odometer. Some people think the church has it, but if you look at the church as a replica of mine. Oh wow. So he’s leaving Navu and he’s gonna take this track, and he, he goes all the way to Utah, and then he writes a really cool book. It’s so valuable, it’s so scarce. He wrote a book called The Latter Day Saints Immigrant’s Guide, and he used his odometer, you know, to measure the distances and, and then calculate the distances back too, and he went back to Saint Louis and published this, this little pamphlet, um. It’s so scarce. It’s so, it’s, it costs more than a first edition book on one. It’s a really, really neat book.

[1:50:49] Michelle: Do you have one?

[1:50:51] John Hajicek: Yes, yes. But he writes this hymn, right, and the hymn is probably as popular as any Latter-day Saint hymn, maybe in the top 5, would you say come come ye

[1:51:03] Michelle: saints? Absolutely, yep, all is well in Zion. It’s an

[1:51:07] John Hajicek: interesting. You know, the first, it’s first printed in 1851 that I know of, and I just did a quick check. I’m not an expert on the hymn, but I have all the hymnals from 1835 through 100 years or so, so, um. That’s the 1851 and then then they’re super pretty, some of them.

[1:51:27] Michelle: Oh, look at those.

[1:51:28] John Hajicek: And so anyway, that’s these are printed in England. Um, so, like James String published a hymnal in 1849, and another one in 1850. The Latter Day Saints in Utah didn’t print a hymnal until 1871. Really? Just to uh to get a uh uh understand the, the impact of James Trang. He’s publishing scriptures uh he’s publishing a daily newspaper before the, or about the, I think before he, his, his daily newspaper came out, he published a daily newspaper before the Deseret News. OK, wow. A lot of people that followed him. But anyway, the hymnal, this is an 1851 hymnal from England because the church did have a press in England, but they weren’t doing any printing in Salt Lake City yet till 1871, they printed the Book of Mormon and hymnal in in Salt Lake in 1871. And then famously, as you know, the 1876 Doctrine Covenants with the section 132 is first printed in in um. 18 I print that in the in the English editions of the Doctrine of Covenants.

[1:52:38] Michelle: OK, wait, they didn’t, they didn’t, so they, they made, they made doctrine and Covenants to send to England that did not include 132. No, no,

[1:52:47] John Hajicek: that’s not what I meant. They print the doctrine of Covenants in Navvo. They, they print it first in, in, um, Kirtland in 1835, and it has a section forbidding polygamy. Joseph that again in 1844 and it actually prints that again from the same stereotyped plates. A stereotype plate is a semi-permanent plate. Uh, they, they stereotype it and so they print it again in 1945 and 946, but they also simultaneously print the Doctrine and Covenants in England in 1845. And then they reprint that in a, in a new type setting in 1849 and they printed in 1852. 54, I think, in 1866,

[1:53:30] Michelle: but none of those section 101. Yes,

[1:53:33] John Hajicek: and they do not contain 12, especially in England, until they can finally print a doctrine of covenants in Utah in 1876, and then they put section 132 in it. But anyway, I digress. This is, uh, the hymnal Come Come Ye Saints, and I don’t even want to sing it.

[1:53:50] Michelle: So I had a, well, I had a question about your, about the hymns because I, I did have this one question. Um, Emma in, is it section 25, I, I knew at one time in the revelation Joseph gave to Emma, um, or the, you know, the revelation God gave to Emma through Joseph Smith, she was basically set apart to create a hymnal. And she worked and worked and worked on that through all of her losses. And then I was surprised to find out that Brigham Young in England was printing hymnals and in other, like I’m curious if you know any of the like where they’re stepping on toes. That was, that was the question I asked.

[1:54:27] John Hajicek: Oh, they definitely were. So she gets called to print a hymnal. I think Phelps, uh, did a lot of the work, um, on that hymnal. Yeah, yeah, and, uh, you know, he was a printer and a and a hymn writer too. Emma was, um, I have Emma’s dad’s, uh, hymnal, you know, his Methodist hymnal, Isaac Hale’s Methodist hymnal, so she has, she has music in her family. Um, She does her hymnal in 1835. Uh, David Rogers, not, this is David W. Rogers, not the same thing as the art, not the same person as the artist, but a man named David W. Rogers in New York City, uh, did a sort of plagiarized her book, did another hymnal, and it looked a lot and sounded a lot like her hymnal and had most of her hymns in 1838. Um, in England, though, they did legitimately need a hymnal, but I think there was some hard feelings there. So Brigham Young and John Taylor and Hebrew C. Kimble did a hymnal there in Manchester in 1840, and then did one almost every year afterward. Uh, Emma doesn’t get a second edition out until 1841 in Navvo, sort of in conjunction with the, the laying of the corner, the, the laying of the cornerstone of Bonavu or the groundbreaking maybe of the Navo temple, whereas the The Kirtland Hymnal was the was the uh dedication of the Kirtland Temple. So I kind of think of him as like the Kirtland Temple hymnal and the Navo Teleno. But then, um, but then there were others that did hymnals. Johnny Page, who followed Strang did a hymnal while Joseph was still alive and Uh, John Hardy, another one, I out of Boston. There, there’s a number of hymnals, but I think really if Emma was jealous, it was a jealousy not between Brigham or or Clayton. Clayton does this hymnal. Clayton’s part of, you know, getting him getting hymns in a hymnal and I think 1851. I think that’s the first. I’m not positive. There are people who know better than me, but I think his first, I think his first, uh, contribution is this this seminal in 1851. And that’s come come ye saints. But I think it’s like the diary, right? Like we’re just talking about like, what is he up to? This either absolutely is the best fulfillment of any prophecy of Joseph Smith, cause Joseph Smith prophesized in the Book of Mormon that somebody’s gonna sing, cry out, all is well, all is well. And he creates a hymn that says that. So he’s either fulfilling Joseph Smith’s prophecy, or he knows, and he’s like, He’s,

[1:57:05] Michelle: he’s fulfilling prophecy either knowingly or unknowingly like, so I’ve always just thought that was a really weird irony. You’re thinking there’s like importance to that, to teach us that this is where we are like, like we as members of the church maybe should be aware that we are actually fulfilling Book of Mormon prophecy in that hymn.

[1:57:26] John Hajicek: Yeah, yeah.

[1:57:27] Michelle: And, and so,

[1:57:28] John Hajicek: so you and this doesn’t all originate with, you know, he kind of models this after some existing hymns. There’s a hymn called, um, I think it’s called the Dying Christian that he kind of models these words, all is well, all is well, you know, should we die, um, and should we die before our journeys through happy day, All is well. Happy day, and should we die before our journey is through Happy day, all is well. And they’re singing this as they’re leaving Navo where God told them to finish a temple. They haven’t finished the temple, according to Brigham Young, and they’re leaving the stake of Zion where God told him was a was a place of refuge and safety. They’re going out into the wilderness to claim that Zion is in the desert, and they’re singing and and by the way, 1/4 of the children die along the way, and he’s singing. And should we die all as well? Happy day. Happy day all as well. So, you know, that’s in the Book of Mormon. And I have I brought John Taylor’s Book of Mormon from Navvo and it’s the one he gave his wife.

[1:58:35] Michelle: I was gonna ask you what book of Mormon do you use? I assume you don’t use this is a really old one, but you don’t use one of ours.

[1:58:41] John Hajicek: Do you read these books?

[1:58:43] Michelle: Oh, do you? I’m sure you do.

[1:58:46] John Hajicek: What do you think the books of Mormon, that’s a big part of what I do is, is, is educating on the, which isn’t for today, but educating on the, on the importance of the different additions and why they need to be preserved to understand the The evolution of the text and how Oliver Cowdrey and Joseph worked with the printer’s manuscript and the original manuscript and the book form in first edition and created a new text for, for 1837 in Kirtland and printed that and then you, you know, there were like 4000 changes, most of them typographical though. But then they made just 40 more changes when they did this revised edition. And so that was the corrected Kirtland edition I call it, and then the revised Nabu edition is only 40 changes, and then Joseph Smith printed himself an edition of the Book of Mormon in 1842. He was the printer. His name appears on the bottom, and, and there’s no corrections. There’s no improvements. It’s, that’s OK testimony with 1842, which is identical to the 1840. So we call it the, you know, the. That’s a long story. I can go into a lot of detail, OK. This is the 1840, which is a great, it’s a great addition, great version. And um well I also almost don’t have enough light here to read this. Um, but you, but you’re familiar with this. This is, this is uh in, in 1840 they called this section or chapter number 12, and it’s chapter number 28 in today’s

[2:00:19] Michelle: Mhm. Secondly by 28, yeah. Oh.

[2:00:24] John Hajicek: And you’re gonna let me preach. Wow, this is great. I don’t get to preach very often. I have I’m just

[2:00:30] Michelle: looking it up as well. Yeah, we, we, we should wrap it up relatively soon, but this is fascinating. I want to

[2:00:36] John Hajicek: I want to read a few. I want to read scriptures. I want to read this one and it says, and it says, uh, others who will pacify and lull them away into carnal security that they will say, all is well in Zion. Yeah, Zion prosper, all is well. And thus the devil cheeth their souls and leadeth them. Now this is why they’re being led to Utah, and then leadeth them carefully way down to hell. And then further down, therefore woe be unto him that is at ease in Zion, woe be on him that crieth all is well. And woe be unto him that hearkeneth under the precepts of men. And so then I like to connect that. I want to connect for you that word precepts of men. It continues, uh, a little further, um, um, in my case, on page 113. Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm. That’s like trusting in human. You know, as opposed to the rod of iron, right? So you’re trusting cursed

[2:01:36] Michelle: is that you know, I have verses some of my favorites for a long time for the exact reason you’re saying. Or

[2:01:43] John Hajicek: shall the precepts of men, their precepts shall be given the power of the Holy Ghost. Well, there’s a parallel to that in Jeremiah. Do you know about that one? Tell me, Jeremiah, it says, it uses the same words. It says, thus sayeth the Lord cursed me, I get to preach. I love it. I usually preach on Mormon Road in Wisconsin. Thus sayeth the Lord, Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert and shall not see when good cometh but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness in a salt land and not inhabited. Wow. Well, a lot of people argue the church has been saying for 100 and some years, you know, the church is just gonna grow. It’s supposed to grow, it’s gonna grow indefinitely, but that’s not what Doctrine of Covenants 45 says. Doctrine of Covenants 45 says, and when the times of thes come in. So those that are, if anybody wants to write this down, it’s 45 verses 28 through 30. Section 45 verses 28 to 30 says, and when the times of the Gentiles come in, a light shall break forth among them that sit in darkness, and it shall be the fullness of my gospel. But they receive it not. For they perceive not the light, and they turn their hearts from me because of the precepts of men. So there you have it again. I’m tying this in the precepts of men, and then it says, and in that generation shall the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. What? The times the Gentiles, you almost think they’re never gonna be fulfilled. The, the, it’s gonna roll like a stone cut out of the mouth forever on going until everybody’s just like us. But that’s not what Joseph Smith’s revelations say. And so then that kind of, if you don’t understand that kind of the generations of the, the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled, it comes from one Nephi 13, and it was this, uh, almost like a chiasmus where it says, uh, you know, the gospel will go first to the Jews. And they’ll reject it. That’s at the time of Jesus. The gospel goes first to the Jews and they’ll reject it, and then it goes to the Gentiles and they accept it. But in the that’s the former days, and then in the latter days, the gospel goes first to the Gentiles and they reject it. And then it goes to the Jews and they accept it. And that is a theme that runs all the way through Latter-day Saint preaching in the 1830s and 1840s. They are not arguing in the 1830s and 1840s that everybody is gonna accept Joseph Smith. The argument is that he’s gonna be martyred and and rejected and the church is gonna collapse and then the gospel is gonna go to the Jews. So,

[2:04:40] Michelle: wow, well, and I want. OK, so I just want to add I’m gonna go, I haven’t connected 1st 13 to it, but um, where you stopped reading and secondi 28 I think is important because it continues and um I think it’s important that it says ya will be unto him that say we have received and we need no more and I think that that’s what we tend to do is we already know everything we need to know and it goes on to continue and that’s. Where we talk about those who tremble lest they shall fall because they’re on a sandy foundation. I’ve quoted that so many times in this podcast that all of our false traditions about the prophet can never lead us astray, and the and the truthfulness of 132 that are our false traditions and woe be unto him that shall say we have received the word of God and we need no more of the word of God, for we have enough. That’s, that’s our danger and our day. That’s directly to us. I I actually love your preaching because I completely agree with it.

[2:05:33] John Hajicek: OK, well I’ll go back just a little bit more to the top of 28 then. They robbed the the poor because of their fine sanctuaries. They robbed the poor because of their fine clothing, and they persecute the meat and the poor in heart because in their pride. They are puffed up. They wear stiff necks and high heads. Yeah, because of pride and wickedness and abominations and whoredoms, they have all gone astray save it be a few who are the humble followers of Christ. Nevertheless, they are led that in many instances they do err because they are taught. By the pre

[2:06:07] Michelle: the precepts of men, yeah, yeah. OK, so I did an episode on Zion versus polygamy that if you’re interested in, I use that exact scripture in it to talk about how they are antithetical to one another. So John, this has been fascinating. I have loved talking to you and all of the information you’ve brought. Is there anything you wanted to add or include that we didn’t cover?

[2:06:31] John Hajicek: No, this was fun. Thank you. We can do this again.

[2:06:35] Michelle: Yes. I would, I would love to talk to you again. I’m gonna have to digest a lot of this, and I have a lot of, uh, you know, so many things to look into, but you are a wealth of knowledge. I would love to see more of your artifacts and have you explain more. And, um, anyway, I can’t thank you enough. I do like, like if there is anything that you didn’t get to say that you wanted to, I don’t want you to feel

[2:06:57] John Hajicek: like me on my social media and come and see me in Independence. Everybody’s. Pretty much welcome so. OK,

[2:07:03] Michelle: and maybe we can go to where was it? Where’s Mormon Road? Is that, did you say in Illinois?

[2:07:08] John Hajicek: Burlington, Wisconsin, Burlington, Wisconsin. Well, I’ll go

[2:07:11] Michelle: to, I’ll go to Wisconsin Mormon Road and you preach to us. So,

[2:07:15] John Hajicek: you’re so nice. Thank you for this opportunity to share together and I just like everything you’re doing so much and you’re so good at it. They’re really, really good at this. Thank you.

[2:07:25] Michelle: I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. OK, I hope to talk to you again. This has been amazing. So thank you. All right. I want to again thank John for coming on and thank all of you for joining us. Please, if you have any further questions that you would like um to be able to ask John, include them in the comments because I think there’s a lot more information that we could dig into. I really loved the scriptural theological discussion at the end of um our discussion that we had. I hope that you found that insightful. I would invite anyone to. I’ve I’ve mentioned several times, secondly by 28 and 29 and how critically important I think they are for us. So it was wonderful to me to hear his perspective and how it aligned with mine. I thought it was great. So anyway, thank you again for joining us and I hope you will stick with us as we continue this new deep dive into Joseph’s polygamy. We’ll see you next time.