66: Hyrum Smith: Prophet or Polygamist? with Whitney Horning | 132 Problems: Mormon Polygamy

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Links

Whitney’s books:
Hyrum Smith A Prophet Unsung
Joseph Smith Revealed

Eldredge Smith
Heber C. Kimball Funeral Address for Mary Fielding Smith
Brigham Young Funeral Address for Mary Fielding Smith

Transcript

[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. I am Just so excited about the topic of this interview and about my guest. I have Whitney Horning back again, who is absolutely brilliant. The debt of gratitude that we all owe to her for the research that she has done and continues to do for the topics that she brings up, and for all that she has brought to light on this topic is incredible. To this interview, I got to talk to her about Hiram Smith. She wrote a wonderful book called Hiram Smith, Prophet Unsung, which is So important in this discussion. She’s the one that thought of bringing forward the importance of Hiron Smith in the restoration in our need to remember and honor him and in his testimony about polygamy and what that can teach us. And so I have to say I’m working on my interviewing skills. I just, it’s hard for me to watch my episodes afterward, to watch my episodes. I’m especially embarrassed in the beginning, my brain, I don’t know where it was of our interview. So please know. That, um, I, I, I’m so thankful that Whitney was willing to come and talk to me. I’m embarrassed that I can’t do a better job. I’m trying my best, but, um, I think that Whitney has so much to offer, so I hope you thoroughly enjoy this discussion and everything. That you can learn. Um, the, the links are all below. Whitney wrote a special paper just for this episode. It’s right below in the descriptions, so you can read her sort of synopsis about Hirum, um, and what he can teach us about, about. I, I say Hirums and Joseph’s polygamy, meaning that they weren’t polygamists, the case about whether or not they were polygamists. So I hope you thoroughly enjoy this interview. There are so many resources. Whitney’s book is also linked below, and I again want to thank you for joining us as we take this deep dive into the somewhat less murky waters of Joseph and Hiram’s supposed polygamy. Welcome to this episode of 132 Problems. I am so happy to be here again with my friend Whitney Horning, who I think is brilliant and so studious and hardworking and brings so much to this discussion of specifically Joseph’s polygamy. And today we’re going to talk about Hirum’s polygamy. Um, Whitney wrote a book called Hirum A Prophet Unsung. Is that the right title, which I just finished. I just finished reading. Oh, you tell us, tell us the correct

[02:48] Whitney Horning: Hirum Smith a Pro and.

[02:50] Michelle: Oh, I left off his last name. I apologize. Hirum Smith, a prophet and ang. It’s excellent. It’s filled with theology, specific theology, and also so much information about. Hirum, specifically his family, and also all of the Smith family, Lucy and Joseph Senior’s children, which is so important. It’s, it was amazing to me while reading it to realize how little we actually know of the Smith family when they are, you know, the founding family of our church. So such a Important work to be done. So I’m really excited to have Whitney here. We’re going to talk about other aspects of both Joseph’s polygamy and specifically Hiram’s polygamy, because that is a really important and, um, understudied facet of this conversation, I think. So, Whitney, thank you so much for being here again. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. So, again, would you mind just kind of telling us what inspired you to write this second book? Hopefully my audience remembers you from our first conversation about, um, oh, I’m drawing a blank on your first book. Um, the, the real Joseph Smith, what’s the, what’s your first book called?

[04:03] Whitney Horning: called Joseph Smith revealed a Faithful Telling.

[04:07] Michelle: That’s right. OK. So your book on Joseph as Joseph Smith revealed. I apologize that my brain is drawing a blank. Such a good book. I would recommend that people start with that book and then follow with the Hirum book because they are so important. So would you mind telling us what um inspired you to write the book on Hirum?

[04:26] Whitney Horning: Sure. So the book on Joseph Smith came about. Um, I’ve been trying to understand and figure out polygamy specifically similar to what your journey has been, um, working it out with the scriptures, whether it really was a God, and then that led me to wanting to figure once I knew it wasn’t of God, then I wanted to figure out whether Joseph was a true prophet, a fallen prophet, um. And what his deal was with polygamy. And so when I discovered that Joseph hadn’t done it, I wanted to share that with the world. And, um, so that, that’s how my Joseph Smith book came about. But during that process, I just started having, um, just this idea of Him on my heart that I really didn’t know much about him, and I wanted to learn more about him. And specifically Doctrine and Covenant section 124 when it um reveals the Lord has called Hiram to be a co-prophet and a co-president and a seer and a revelator, and yet I knew in the LDS church. They do not count him in the list of prophets. They do call him the patriarch of the church, but they did not recognize him as the um second prophet of the church. And so that was just very fascinating to me and so I started um researching all I could on him, but it really wasn’t until I published my Joseph Smith book and I just You know, it was kind of an exhausting process, um. And I was kind of taking a little break just, you know, from um church history research and all of that, and I just couldn’t get hirem off my mind, and I just, I don’t know, I just knew that I’d end up writing a book and that I needed to do more research so that I could do that.

[06:26] Michelle: OK, that’s so fabulous. So, so in studying Joseph, I, it is amazing to me. I’m looking at Doctrine Covenant 124 while you’re talking because it seems to me that That’s one we really ignore. Yeah, you know, we don’t talk about this very much. I, years ago, I went and talked to Hiram Andres, who was a BYU, um, scholar, a church scholar, and he was pretty dismissive of me with some of the questions I was asking like kind of who do you. I think you are a little girl, you know, but he was the one that actually brought up to me that Hiram was called as a co-prophet, a co-president, and that Joseph was kind of like, like he compared it to the brother of Jared, Jared and the brother of Jared, and that leadership brotherhood. Have you thought about that? That’s

[07:11] Whitney Horning: and I haven’t really thought of it in that sense. I, for me, in the comparison to the Book of Mormon, I have thought of it as Nephi and Jacob. Because he, you know, and, and even to be honest, like Lehi and Nepi, so Lehi, he has his um vision of the Lord, um, becomes a redeemed man. Nephi wants the same thing his father had, and then they also have their sons, um, Jacob and Joseph, Jacob becomes the next, um, priest, so in the Book of Mormon, um. So if we go all the way back to Melchizedek, in the Bible, Melchizedek is a king priest, and that’s the title Melchizedek, um, he is the, the king of Salem. And he is also Abraham’s son Shem, or I mean not Abraham, um, Noah’s son Shem, so Shem is named Melchizedek. So we see in that pattern, the father son pattern, but also the king priest. And so when Nephi becomes um the king of his people, it was more of a priestly role. King priest is a priestly role and Nephi actually divides the uh the leadership and the authority, so to speak. So he and his descendants take the king line and the Um, more of the administration role of taking care of the people, and Jacob takes the priestly line. And the priestly duties. So I guess when I thought of Hiram and Joseph, because Joseph does have a statement where he, he admonishes the people that Hiram is a prophet and that they’re not paying him any heed. And some, and then in his journal, he writes a few days after giving that sermon, um, a few men come to his office and are very concerned at what that means about Joseph and Joseph said you don’t understand. I am moving on. To and he talks about being a king priest. And so I almost feel like Joseph and Hiram was kind of repeating that pattern that Nephi and Jacob did, of having the the administration role and then the priestly role and Joseph. wanting to move more away from the administration and more into the priestly and and one of the people to acknowledge Hiram and give him heed as uh the prophet and president of the church, which the people never did.

[09:51] Michelle: OK, that’s, see, I guess that’s why I, I actually am grateful that I had that conversation with Hiro Madras cause he explained the exact same thing that you just explained, even about the meeting and the people going, What are you doing? You can’t put Hiraman. Like they really objected, the men that came and talked to him. And, and I think it is interesting to see the repeated patterns. The, I like that that you brought up Nephi and Jacob, and I like the Jared and the brother of Jared pattern, because there’s clearly sort of a priest and king role there. As well. So it, so we see that God, you know, it’s amazing to me what Joseph understood. Yeah, you know, how, how deep his knowledge and understanding was of these things that, you know, so I guess, um, I, I, I find it interesting that we did have, so moving on to discussing the patriarch, we had the calling of the high patriarch of the church, right? Which was, so it was first Joseph Smith Senior, and then it was Hiram. And it was supposed that was supposed to be lineal descent without question, right? I think our own doctrine of covenants talks about that that had to be lineal at just, is that right?

[11:01] Whitney Horning: It is, it is, but I don’t even think that the LDS church really understood it, just because your father ordained you, doesn’t mean God acknowledges and accepts that ordination, so it has to be both. Um, and technically, the king priest idea is actually just maybe another name for the patriarch of the family. So that and that goes all the way back to the foundation of the earth of Adam. He is the first great patriarchal father, and as such, he also was the king priest. He was the priest of his family, and so Um, when Hirum. His father, his father is dying in September of 1840. He gives, he gathers his children around him, and gives them one last blessing, and, and he ordains hiring to the office of, um, well, not even the office, but to the right of being the patriarch. And so then in January 1841, the Lord acknowledges and ratifies that ordination, and then In a very simple, if you take in a very simple way of explaining it, if you take everything in this world and look at it through the lens of a family. And what a patriarch is, is he was intended to be the father, and he and his wife were to stand as a surrogate for our heavenly father and heavenly mother. Who can’t be here on this earth with us because we’re a fallen world. So they have, so then when they find men like Joseph and and his wife Emma or Hiram and his wife, then they are surrogates, and so the idea of a patriarch was to be a father. And so it, it can be and it should be lineal descent, but only if the child rises up and is acknowledged and accepted by God. And so, um, the LDS Church did perpetuate the calling of patriarch. But they actually changed it as soon as Joseph and Hiram died. Joseph was called by the Lord the patriarch of the church. And and Brigham changed it to patriarch to the church, which is just a sly wording difference, but it’s a huge difference in acknowledging

[13:40] Michelle: their positions,

[13:43] Whitney Horning: right, and so Brigham did um when he came to the west, came to the Utah area. Um, Mary Fielding Smith was Hirum’s second wife. His first wife died, and then he remarried, and Mary um took care of all of the children. Um, Hiram’s oldest daughter had just gotten married, and so she stayed in Navo. And so Mary, um, came west with her siblings who were following Brigham, and she was friends with a lot, you know, a lot of the saints and a lot of the ones from England. She was herself from England, and so she brought the children to Utah and in Utah, Brian Young, um, he carried on the pear charcoal line throughyrum’s first wife Jerusha. And then he called Joseph F. Smith, who was the only son from Marian Hiram, to um the apostleship where he eventually became president. And so for a time, both of Hirum’s lines of his sons through his two different wives did have roles in the church. Um, but then in, I think it was in the 1970s, um, President Kimball, Spencer W. Kimball, did away with the patriarch of the patriarch of the church, the main patriarch, which was in Hirum’s line. And the last one was the fourth generation from higher, which was Eldred G. Smith, and he passed away in April 2013. And from the day he was put on Emeritus status in the 70s up until his death, he went in every day. And worked in his office, and the church kept the LDS church kept minimizing him even in his room to the at the end, he was working like in a back closet where they wouldn’t even give him a stapler. He had to bring his own office supplies, but he went in every day. He was over 100 years old by the time he passed away, because he understood, he didn’t perhaps understand. The complete nature of what a patriarch is in God’s organization. But he understood the significance in the LDS Church organization, and the significance to that being a way to honorably remember Hiram, which in section 124, um, the Lord promises Hiram that he’ll be honorably remembered, and so that’s just really um Just very humbling to me that Eldred Smith took that so seriously, and even though the president of the LDS Church tried to minimize him, he didn’t allow his calling to be minimized um in his own way of worshiping and honoring that calling.

[16:48] Michelle: OK, that’s amazing. I just found an article about this on the church website. And because what I, you know, what I found fascinating was that they actually like closed the calling. Once Eldridge passed away, there is no more general patriarch of the church. They haven’t, they haven’t called another one. So that, that, now, now the, the, um, Stories about him being minimized and being moved to smaller offices and not being supported. Is that in his history and his journals

[17:15] Whitney Horning: where, you know, I don’t know if it is. I have a good friend who had heard about that and wanted to go meet him, and felt the significance of him being the, the final general patriarch. And so he went and he told me that personally, that when you went to find him, the secretary didn’t even know who he was talking about. So he just wandered around until he found him in a back little room that he said it was kind of like the coat closet area. And so he took, he recorded and took notes of his interview. He um elderly let him interview him and ask him questions and then he’s allowed me to read that and so I have read his account, but I myself. OK that’s for my friend, but not, I don’t know if Eldred ever mentioned that himself.

[18:06] Michelle: OK, that’s, that’s a great source though. If he feels inclined to, um, let you have a copy of the of the interview, we’ll, we can attach it in the show notes, but that’s up to him. And so, but in any case, I’ll attach this article because it does, it shows a picture of Eldridge in his wheelchair. He was 106 years old, and it shows him with President Monson but doesn’t, of course, explain. The minimization. I mean, obviously his role was minimized because it was they didn’t call another, like it’s so interesting to me that here Joseph set up the general patriarch. It was Joseph senior, and then Hiram. It was an important part of the church. And now, I mean, we really have gone to where only the apostleship has any authority. Joseph spread it so widely, so it’s really interesting to watch that happen.

[18:53] Whitney Horning: And if you do a deep dive into the theology behind And like I said, if you just even simplify it to that this is supposed to be about families and God’s organization is a family, then the patriarch actually. You could say maybe is co equal to the prophet slash president, but perhaps um greater than.

[19:22] Michelle: Well, do you know what I like is that like, it’s just so different because Joseph was not, at least my impression from everything I’ve read and studied was not about power. You know, he gave the high council the power to vote him out of office, and he, he, he never was like strong army. He really didn’t practice unrighteous dominion that I can see.

[19:44] Whitney Horning: And I agree with you. I don’t see it either.

[19:47] Michelle: So I don’t know that he even would have weighed which is higher or more, you know, he said this council is equal to authority to this council, like the first presidency is equal in authority to the 12, which is equal in authority to the state high council, which we kind of have lost that part of it, you know, that’s in the doctrine and covenants, and then,

[20:06] Whitney Horning: and then a great way to explain it. I think that Joseph wanted everyone to be equal. And obviously being equal doesn’t mean you’ll have the same assignment to someone else or even the same responsibilities, but that we are all of equal value and equal worth and should have an equal voice and an equal say.

[20:25] Michelle: Yeah, and there wasn’t this hierarchy. It wasn’t the king of Bunker Hill as it afterwards became. And so that’s, I mean, I like how you explain the patriarch because it is like, if we think of patriarchal blessings, that is supposed to represent your heavenly parents telling you, you know, their message for you. So it is a different role, but quite beautiful the way you explain it. So it’s interesting how we have Change altered it, right? And I, and I’m not even sure of what the role of the general patriarch was, which is maybe why they ended it because they just moved it to state patriarch, so we didn’t have a need for a general patriarch with how they changed it, you know, in the current structure.

[21:06] Whitney Horning: I actually think that’s exactly what happened. They just didn’t understand what that was supposed to be and I think that it was a beautiful tribute that they continued to tell Eldred Smith tried to honorably remember Hiram in that way, because it was his descendants, but again, perhaps the descendants didn’t even completely understand, um. That we maybe need to include God a little more in when we claim something maybe we should wait until we hear God’s voice, acknowledge that and verify it.

[21:46] Michelle: Yeah, that’s interesting. OK. I am also curious to know if the state patriarchs, I mean, the state, see, I can’t even say it correctly, the general patriarchs spoke in conference. I’ll have to look and see if Eldridge or any of his, um, ancestors in that colleague spoke in general conference, cause I know that, um, Joseph Smith senior absolutely did. And Hirum Smith really was co-equal with Joseph. Like Joseph had Hirum speak, told the people to look to Hirum as as a prophet and as their president, and so. Right. Like Hiram had a lot of authority and would have been Joseph’s successor in the church if like there’s a reason they were both killed, right, because he would have been the next successor.

[22:27] Whitney Horning: So you acknowledged in I believe September. Of 1844, he acknowledged that had Hirum lived, and he acknowledged it in a general conference and it made it into the times and seasons, um, recap of his talk, that had Hiram lived, he would have been the successor.

[22:47] Michelle: OK, that’s and I believe that there was still an understanding that Joseph Smith the 3rd was the rightful successor after Hym was killed because I think you can correct me as I’m, I’m trying to remember, but Brigham Young and, um, who was his other Sydney Rigdon, both kind of proposed themselves as sort of the placeholders. Like Sidney Rigdon said, I should be the placeholder until Joseph the Third comes of age, and Brigham said the 12 should be the placeholder until Joseph comes of age. Like that’s how they originally saw themselves, which is partly why, in my, you know, my understanding is why it was such a threat when Joseph the 3rd and the other descendants of Joseph Smith started opposing the Salt Lake, the Utah

[23:32] Whitney Horning: Church. But I think it’s so, so as we’re talking about hirerum, I think because because you’re exactly right, that is what they proposed at first to be caretakers of the church until Joseph Smith was of age. Which even right there shows as soon as Joseph and Hiram are dead, they still didn’t acknowledge Hirum because why wasn’t there any discussion or any talk about, because in the Bible, when uh um sun rises up and becomes the prophet slash patriarch. Um, so we have an example of, um, Isaac has the two sons, and Esau is the eldest, and he’s going to give it to Esau, and the mother, Rebecca, she knows which son I should go to, and so she helps Jacob obtain that birthright. Um, so, It’s supposed, so it, it just shows that if Hirum had been called a God, and a lot of people maybe don’t realize also, so in the Joseph Smith senior is called, and it’s ratified by God and it’s called by revelation through Joseph Junior, Hiram was the older brother. And so when Hirum receives that, God is acknowledging his pattern that it goes to the oldest righteous living descendants. So it was first Joseph Junior, but when Hiram obtained those promises and blessings from God, then in 124, God says, I give you my priesthood first, Hirum. So even though, yes, we’re all equal, in a family, there is a father. And then the children, and then when that father passes, then a new patriarch of the family, if you think of it like that, so it’s the oldest righteous living descendants, so. Hirum’s descendants should have been the ones they were concerned about taking over. In caretaking for Hiram’s oldest son who was John. And so, um, I feel like even just right away, they, they’re immediately minimizing him and his calling and What promises and blessings and covenants he had received from the Lord, they’re minimizing immediately.

[25:58] Michelle: OK, OK, that’s really interesting. So, OK, there are so many directions I want to go and I wanna remember to cover all of these different points. The first thing to talk about, I think, is, it seems to me also, um, Joseph Smith, I mean, Joseph F. Smith, Hirum’s son with Jerusha. So no, Josephson with with Mary, Joseph’s son with Mary. I was thinking that he was an orphan, not remembering that Mary also died. So he was an orphan in Utah, pretty wild, didn’t have a father, didn’t have a mother, grew up in abject poverty. And he was called into the apostleship as a very young man. And a pretty wild man, right? And, and it does seem to me that that was sort of the Utah church’s attempt to have the line, the lineal claim as well that they were arguing with the RLDS about. Like, yes, OK, we have Hiram’s son, he’s, he’s an apostle now. He’s one of us. And so that seems to me to have motivated his call to the 12.

[26:58] Whitney Horning: I agree with you. I think so. Yeah, I would agree with that. That’s what I think too, and, and John, so John, when um Mary brought the children to Utah, the Jeru, like I said, was married and Abu, she got married, I think she was 16, and she married the day before her dad was taken to Carthage. And so she’s OK,

[27:20] Michelle: let’s remember what you’re talking. Let’s just back up and like give people the update. So Hirum, his first wife was Jerusha. Hiram and Jerusha got married when when Hirum was 26 and Jerusa was was 21 maybe. OK, and they had 6 children, right? And, um, and, and what did one of their children pass away was Mary.

[27:43] Whitney Horning: So their little girl Mary died just before the age of 3 and then. Their little son Hirum Junior died in

[27:50] Michelle: 7. OK, so they had 4 living children. Mary, I mean, um, Jerusha gave birth to their last child. Was that

[28:01] Whitney Horning: Sarah? Sarah?

[28:03] Michelle: OK. Had Sarah and, and never recovered, died a few weeks later while Hirum was on a mission. So Hirum was was left a widower with 4 living children at that point.

[28:16] Whitney Horning: Did you, OK.

[28:18] Michelle: Well,

[28:18] Whitney Horning: he had 5 living children at that time. Liyrum didn’t die for a couple more years. So when Drew had died, they just have the one child that had died. OK, he doesn’t lose hierm Junior for a few more years. OK. And this is Mary Fielding. He has 5 little children under the age of 10 and a brand new baby. So one of those being a brand new baby.

[28:44] Michelle: OK, so this is all important because it plays into the claims of Hiram’s polygamy, right? So we have to understand his story. So, so Hirum, and it does break your heart because from all of the accounts, Jerusha was just an angel. Like Hiram and Jerusha just seem like Those good people who are just so easy for everyone to get along with and peacemakers and giving. I know that the, the Smith family, Joseph Senior and Lucy and their many children moved into Hiraman Grusha’s tiny little home when Joseph Senior again lost his farm. So they lived like she was a true daughter to them. So, and Jerusha just seems like a good woman and truly a love match. Like Hiram and Jerusha really loved each other.

[29:27] Whitney Horning: And that’s definitely the feeling I get from what there is about that.

[29:32] Michelle: OK. And then Mary Fielding was older. She was 35, had intentionally never, well, she had had offers but did not want to be a stepmother. Her mother had told her, Don’t be a stepmother. She didn’t want to be a stepmother. But fine, and, and, and, you know, she seems like a spunky, good woman. Like I, I like Mary as well, but very different from Jerusha. And said she would marry Hiram for the sake of his children. So went against her her inclination to not be a stepmother because of this desperate situation. And I guess probably thought Hiram was a really good man to marry, you know, she was a member of the church. So Mary and Hiram got married and then had, did she have two more children and

[30:17] Whitney Horning: 2 together, yes. Joseph F. Smith and then a little girl, Martha Ann.

[30:23] Michelle: OK, and that was the situation when Hirum was killed. So Mary was left with her two little children

[30:31] Whitney Horning: and Hirum’s 4 living children. So there were 6, and so his oldest Jerusha or his oldest daughter, Lavinia had just gotten married. So when Mary left with the saints, um, Almost 2 years later, or maybe just, yeah, almost 2 years later, John actually went ahead with Hebrew C. Kimball and their family.

[30:56] Michelle: So John was Hiram and Jerusha’s

[30:58] Whitney Horning: son.

[31:00] Michelle: OK, so the oldest was

[31:01] Whitney Horning: 15, I believe, and then Mary came later and then they met up at winter quarters, and then she brought the rest of the children and when they got to Utah, she Um, purchased a little farm kind of out in the middle of nowhere away from Salt Lake, and raised the children, and then she passes away in 1852, a few weeks after the public announcement of polygamy. So, let’s follow the rest of children. As orphans, and then they did have um a lady they called Auntie Hannah, who had been with Hiraman Gruha since Kirtland. They had taken her in as an elderly widow, and so she actually stayed with Mary and then she came out to Utah, and she took care of the children but she passed away in 1853. So by 1853, Those the children have no one. John is, I believe, by that time he’s like 2021, newly married. He tries to help out with the younger children. But like you said, Joseph F just kind of runs wild. It doesn’t really have any stability really. He’s kind of passed around. Um, Hebrewy Kimmel takes him for a while, bring him young. He’s kind of raised by them a little bit, um, by his stepbrother John. And so there’s just a lot of chaos in those children’s lives.

[32:29] Michelle: How old was he when, how old was he in 1852, um. I, I want to look that up.

[32:34] Whitney Horning: He was born when his, so he was born when Hiram was in prison in Liberty Jail, and that was 1839. So he would have been 4

[32:45] Michelle: or 5

[32:46] Whitney Horning: 13 when he was 13 when his mother died, but he would have been, um, I believe he was only like 65 or 6 when his dad died.

[32:59] Michelle: OK, so there are so many directions that I want to come back to what you were talking about, but I wanted to set the stage. There are so many questions from people about why Mary would come with Brigham Young if Hiram wasn’t a polygamist. So, so let’s talk about that a little bit. I think you have some insight into that

[33:17] Whitney Horning: because so I, so my book is dedicated to one of my dear friends who is a descendant of Hiram Smith, and she’s a descendant through Mary. And so I’d read a few books and things out there that kind of um Claimed that Mary must have been a polygamist because she marries Hebrey Kimmel right away, and then she comes with the saints to Utah. And I felt like I, I owed my dear friend the courtesy of trying to figure out and understand Mary. And so I spent several months, um, this book took me almost 3.5 years from the beginning of researching to the end. And I spent several of those months researching Mary Fielding. And she’s she’s a remarkable woman, and the sense I get from her is that she was of a more somber and serious nature. She adored her family, was family was incredibly important to her. She was raised in England. Her older brother Joseph Fielding, and her younger sister, Mercy. Um, something happened that was a scandal that there are no records of what it was exactly. It’s just referred to that they, that Joseph had a school and the scandal had taken place and that he and Mercy had to leave the country. So they leave and go to Canada and settle and immigrate to Canada. They write um Mary letters asking her to come join them, and she says nothing could induce me to leave my family here or my country. She loved England, she loved where she lives, she loved her family. And so she said the only thing that would induce me to leave is if the Lord wanted me to. And then within a few short months of that letter, Joseph and Mercy take ill. They’re living together on a farm in Canada. They become ill and they write to Mary and ask her to come and to take care of them and help them, and so she does. So she’s living with them in Canada when Parley P. Pratt serves his mission up there. And he converts the three siblings, and they’re baptized in a stream on their farm. They decide to um immigrate to Portland, Ohio. The church is kind of gathering in Kirtland and in far west, and so they come to Kirtland, um, Joseph Fielding ends up getting married. He leaves and goes to England to serve missions, and then Mercy ends up getting married to Robert. B Thompson, and they actually are sent off on a mission together. And so it leaves Mary alone in Kirtland. She’s, um, extremely poor, but she’s very well educated. And so she is moves from home to home being a live-in tutor, what we would like a, um, Um maybe an Americanized version of a nanny because she took care of the children but also um was like a governess governess would be, but in America she didn’t call herself a governess. She was a live-in tutor and so she kind of was taken in from family to family and she ends up her last Home she lived in before she married was the Dort family, and those were cousins to Hiram and Joseph. So she moves in with them, though um is taking care of their children, and she writes Mercy a letter saying that her situation is about to change. She, she’s destitute, she doesn’t know what to do. The dorts can’t afford her to keep her anymore, and so she’s going to be losing a place to live, losing income, losing food and shelter when Hiram’s wife dies. And it’s kind of just this providential circumstance. She needs a place to live, he needs somebody to care for his children. He doesn’t, I don’t think felt comfortable bringing, he’s 37 at the time. I don’t think he felt comfortable comfortable bringing in a 35 year old woman into his home to care for his children without being married to marrying her. And so it almost appears that perhaps it was more of a a marriage of convenience for both of them. She needed a job, he needed someone to help with the children. But I believe in in a lot of their letters, they talk about their friendship and they truly cherished each other, and I think they were um really work to being good friends, and Hirum seems to have really desire for her to love him as he seems to love her, and so I think they did really grow to love each other. So Mary, so fast forward to after Hirum’s death. I believe so. I, I saw a pattern as I studied Mary’s letters and her life. I started seeing a pattern of a personality that sacrificed what she wanted to do what she thought she should do to help others. So she was very selfless and she didn’t want to leave England. She leaves England to go take care of her siblings. She doesn’t want to marry somebody who has children. She mentions that over and over. She’s turned down suitors to have children. Hirem needs somebody. She, she gives up that desire to be maybe the first wife and only wife and only mother. She gives that up to help hire him. So I believe by the time Hirum dies, and the church, the church members who were following Brigham and the 12 West. Her siblings were part of that. So her sister Mercy is now a widow, um, she has one little girl, her brother Joseph Fielding, they’re both leaving Navvo and heading west, and I get the sense that Mary really was wanting to keep the family together, more so than that she necessarily believed in. The doctrines being taught by Brigham and Hebrew. And then I think then I think that it goes even further to show she has a letter she writes on the westward journey to her sister Mercy and um There she’s very upset in the letter. She tells Mercy, I’ve been hearing things about you. Um, these are very upsetting to me. We’re gonna have to talk about this when I, when we meet back up. Um, if you look at Mercy’s life, Mercy becomes married to John Taylor, and then divorces John Taylor, and is married to a third man at the time that this letter is written, and then also she’s traveling with her brother Joseph is in her company, and in that letter, Joseph Fielding marries a lygamist wife just before they leave Navu. And she calls his wives his two women. So I don’t ever get the sense that Mary Fielding ever approved of it. I mean, we, we have no idea how she felt about, uh, you know, if, if rumors were going around about her husband hire or not, um. She never recorded anything of that nature?

[41:19] Michelle: So, OK, so a couple of things. Well, first, because you brought up Mercy, didn’t, you didn’t mention also, I didn’t Mercy divorce her last husband because he took a plural wife? So Mercy was not

[41:30] Whitney Horning: she stays the rest of her life. Right.

[41:33] Michelle: And so Mercy has a series of divorces, the last one of which was because her husband took a plural wife. So that tells us a lot about Mercy. And then we don’t know how well known polygamy was in Navu, right? Like, I don’t think that it was like we know that up until Joseph’s death, at least, and Joseph and Hyrum’s death, Brigham and Heber and William Clayton, their wives were kept secret, right? Like it wasn’t known. And so we don’t know. So I, I guess what I want to clarify is if people want to assume that Mary Fielding Smith coming west is evidence of her testimony of polygamy, that’s there’s not good evidence to support that at all.

[42:14] Whitney Horning: She,

[42:17] Michelle: she already has a pattern.

[42:18] Whitney Horning: I believe she has been lied about just like Joseph and Hyer because the obvious church, if you go on to, you know, any of their. Websites where they list wives or dates. They claim that Hebrewy Kimball and Mary Fielding entered into a polygamous marriage in the first part of September 1844, 6 weeks after Hirum’s death. So that is the date the church gives. If you go into Hebrewy Kimball’s journals, or even Brigham Young’s, Hebrewy Kimmel for that day, he was a very prolific journal keeper, and he had no problem writing down. By the first of September, he and he and Briggan are running around Navo stealing people in marriages. In their homes, um, even men who were dying, they would steal women to them. As the men were on their deathbed, so he could have his polygamous wives going into heaven. Um, so Heber, on the day that the church claims that he married Mary Fielding, in his journal, he writes nothing new. Nothing happened. Brigham Young writes, we went and visited this person, went and visited this person, stopped in and saw Hirum Smith’s widow. But again, Brigham’s not shy about in his journal recording who he sell to who. And so I don’t believe that that happened. What is more likely is that by January 1846, when the Nabu Temple still wasn’t completed, but they finished out the attic so they could start doing endowments and ceilings before they start heading west. And um, Mary, by that time, Brigham and Huber were doing a form of ceiling where if your spouse had died, They would do a ceiling by proxy, which Joseph had talked about, but then they would steal you to a living husband. For time.

[44:32] Michelle: Which is so, hey, can we talk about that for a second? I want you to remember where you’re going. ceiling for time. Can we talk about the, I’m sorry, but the utter stupidity of that as a concept at all. What, like ceiling, everyone should understand. Cause I guess I I guess we still feel in the temple for time if people, if women don’t want to get a temple divorce, and why

[44:56] Whitney Horning: the temple, but your point is what you’re gonna make is why use the word feel? The word means, uh, promise with each other for eternity. Why would you steal something that’s going to end at death?

[45:13] Michelle: Right,

[45:13] Whitney Horning: like, like you would like,

[45:16] Michelle: like we recognize you as a husband and wife by the power vested in me as a representative of the government, right, because it’s a, that’s all we’re doing sealing and like I invite people to study out ceiling throughout the scriptures. It always is what you feel on earth will be sealed in heaven. It has an eternal. Um, but like the very definition of the word is that it’s recognized on both sides of the veil that it has an eternal, um, connotation. So, so this idea of ceiling for time is really just silly, isn’t it? Like.

[45:52] Whitney Horning: It is, I think what maybe could have happened. And you know, I’ve been trying to, you know, obviously try to figure out what exactly was going on. And maybe where some of these ideas took root, and I’m, I think that perhaps Um, Joseph and Hyrum were Holy Spirits of promise and a Holy Spirit of promise. Really, the Holy Spirit of promise is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who the Lord feels. Who the Lord extends promises to, who he binds to himself on earth is going to be in heaven. So he is the ultimate. But he does appoint representatives. It’s very rare. We have an example. Can I,

[46:42] Michelle: can I just let me read section 124 verse 124, because I think this is something that we as members of the church are not familiar with at all. Like it sounds strange to hear that said. So in our own doctrine and covenants, 124, 124, 1st, I give unto you Hirum Smith to be a patriarch unto you and to hold the ceiling blessings of my church. So when it says, if it, it, well, anyway, so Hirum held the ceiling blessings. It’s to hold the ceiling blessings of my church, even the Holy Spirit of promise, whereby you are sealed up unto the day of redemption that you may not fall, notwithstanding the hour of temptation. may come upon you. So anyway, so that’s what you’re talking about, I believe, right? Where Hirum is given the healing power and called the Holy Spirit of promise by the Lord.

[47:26] Whitney Horning: So, yeah. So he’s promised what you see on earth will be sealed in heaven, what you lose on earth, what you find, what you curse, you know, so whatever he’s going to do on earth, as in, as above, so below, as below, so above, kind of. And so yes, you’re exactly right. So here comes Brigham and Heber, and I think what was happening. Is that when Joseph had it revealed to him that marriage was intended to be eternal, that when God married Adam and Eve in the garden, he intended that union not to end death, but to continue. Through eternity. And so when Joseph Smith receives the the revelation on marriage, it was very simple. He taught it to the saints in on July 16, 1843.

[48:21] Michelle: So that’s the revelation read to the high council that both Joseph and Hyrum said that that Brigham and others claimed was that what we have is Section 132, and there are testimonies of that. But Joseph and Hiram adamantly said this has nothing. They never saw. I, I don’t believe they ever saw what became 132, but they both said this had nothing to do with polygamy. It was about,

[48:45] Whitney Horning: it was about a man and Joseph said to the saints. A man must be married in view of eternity for his union, for the contracts with the obligations to have any validity in the next life. Now he didn’t, now he’s not saying, OK, I sealed. You two together and so no matter what, I don’t, I don’t care if you end up hating each other by the time you die, you’re gonna be stuck together forever. He was saying, if you want, if you choose, if you want to have your association with your spouse to continue. Then you need to be married by God’s word. And so Hirum had the ability to do that. I, and I think what from little bits and pieces I’ve read from other saints, it caused a lot of heartache for people like Hirum who had been married previously. And so Hiram is a great example. He goes to Joseph and he says this in his April 8th, 1844 conference. Well, he’s, it’s a special meeting of the elders at conference, and he explains to the elders. I went to Joseph and said, I married me a wife, and he’s talking about Jerusha. I married her before we had this understanding, so it was till death do us part, basically, and that is what the tradition of the day was. And, you know, is there anything I can, that can be done for her? And Joseph said, sure, yeah, if you want to be sealed to her, you can be sealed by proxy. And then he said, well, I have a living wife, so what do I do about the living wife? I have children with her. And Joseph said, well then you can be sealed to her. And then Hiram tells the elders, Mary chose to stand as proxy for the one who is dead.

[50:37] Michelle: So to clarify, Joseph didn’t tell him he could be sealed to both. Joseph basically said because it sounded like, so, so it put widowers in the same position that widows are currently in. If marriage is eternal, right, then you have an eternal spouse and you can’t. Be sealed to like, like Mary chose to stand in for Jerusha. I think understanding that was a true love match and that Mary and Hiram was, I don’t like calling it a marriage of convenience, but necessity and they were both there trying to love each other,

[51:10] Whitney Horning: yeah. I do think that, and again, that to me shows that Mary was always thinking of others before herself. She sacrificed her own happiness to bring happiness to other people.

[51:24] Michelle: Well, and I don’t think that Hiram was her eternal. Like she, like, you know, like you said, they weren’t, she, she wasn’t in love with Hiram for many indications that we have. I know that there were some things that had hurt her feelings, and she, you know, I think it was hard what she took on, right? And so I don’t know that I, I, I don’t know that she wanted to be sealed to Hiram for it.

[51:47] Whitney Horning: I understand it was a brand new revelation and doctrine. I mean, the people for the most part. A lot of religions didn’t even believe that you existed after death. Then those who did, you can only ever be an angel, and angels are single in heaven. So now here comes Joseph, which with a very startling revelation. That, oh, you can be married.

[52:14] Michelle: It basically gave us our our doctrine of eternal marriage. That’s where it came from was that revelation of Joseph, which we don’t have. It wasn’t 132, and we don’t have what it was.

[52:24] Whitney Horning: Right, we do not have it. We only have little snippets of what he taught and then what he testified in the like Navo City council just before during the Navo expositor time just before his death, both he and Hiram, like you said, testified that the revelation. If it did mention anything about polygamy, it was about former times, a lot of people have questions about Abraham and about Jacob. But they were very clear that it was simply that a man must be married in view of eternity, and they were very much meant one man, one woman. So Hiram explains that he said, you know, I was sealed to Jerusha with Mary standing as proxy, and even mercy on At first she says she was there. She says she saw her sister do that, and it isn’t until years later that she then adds in. That she was sealed to hirerum, and so it really was just a Hirum ends up being sealed to Jerusa. I think that possibly a marriage ceremony could have been. That if Joseph was performing eternal marriage ceremony, let’s say he was doing it with Hiram, then he would have said with Mary standing as proxy on behalf of Jerushah, who has died. And then if maybe he was marrying a brand new couple, so say that Hiram wasn’t married yet to marry at the time, but he was going to, then I could see him saying, and I’ll marry you too for time, but he wouldn’t have used the word ceiling. There’s no reason to steal something just, I mean, he said very clearly, ceilings are. So that you are, I have a covenant and an obligation continues into eternity, your contract, your marriage vows, that they continue. So I think that Brigham and so fast forward to January 1846, Brigham and Hubert are doing. Numerous ceilings in the attic of the Nava Temple. I think the first day they have recorded Hebrews seals 20 women to himself. And so then what they were doing is if a woman had had a deceased husband, they were telling them, well, we can steal you by proxy to your deceased spouse, but then you have to be married to us. And so I don’t know where that corruption where that, I, but I do believe it was a corruption of the ordinance. And so that that time in January 1846. It’s now been a year and a half sinceyrum’s death. I believe by then, Mary, she isn’t remarrying anybody else. Perhaps she’s feeling, um, has studied ceilings a little more, wants to be connected to Hiram, isn’t sure that she made the right choice. So she does choose to go to the Navo Temple and have Hebrew see Kimball stand as proxy for Hiram. She’s still to Hirum. And then she still to Herey Kimmel as a living husband, but I don’t believe she ever, ever lived with him. She never did live with him. I don’t believe she ever interacted with him as a husband and wife. She seemed to be very disturbed in some of the letters and other things. Hebrewy Kimball leaves Navu. He writes her a letter and it’s just, it’s a letter of, hey hurry, get your stuff together, hurry and come and join us. John’s asking after you. John had gone with him, the oldest son of Hirum, living son, and In that letter, he says, give my love to your sister mercy. No love for Mary. It’s not all I get to send you my love. It’s, hey, give, give my love to your sister mercy, and Mary, you need to stop being so morose. You need to be a. I mean this woman has had nothing but tragedy after tragedy, trial after trial, and she, and I think she was um a little bit more of a A depressed spirit. Um, Joseph S. Smith says his mother, he grew up on skimmed milk because his mother was often prostrate. She had caught a terrible cold when she gave birth to him, that she couldn’t shake for months. She was bedridden for months, and so I think she had just so many challenges, and so for me personally, had nothing but respect and admiration for Mary Fielding. And it really hurts my heart that as we try to exonerate Joseph and Hiram and Emma from polygamy, that people are very unkind about Mary, and I think that’s very unfair. I think everything I’ve read, I also am very concerned with the timeline that she comes to Salt Lake right after the lygamy announcement in August of 1852, she shows up. And all we know is he received Kimmel at her funeral a few weeks later, says, oh, she came to see me, she caught pneumonia, and my wife and I nursed her until she died. So I don’t know that’s a little concerning to me that she dies so soon after and she would have been really the last. True that Hiram was not a lygamist.

[57:56] Michelle: Yeah, so I want to get there. So, OK, so a couple of things, so backing up to what you were talking about before about the testimon, the revelation being read that, that I, I know for people that are claiming we have all of these witnesses testifying that it was 1:32, right? I just want to quickly point out we have at least as many. If not more, saying it it was not 132, it was shorter than that. It didn’t say anything about polygamy. So if anyone wants to say like, like at the best, what you can say is there’s evidence both ways, but we have both Joseph and Hyrum. Very strongly on record saying no, this was not about polygamy. No, this was so anyone who wants to claim, like, like those were not carefully worded denials, those would have been outright lies from Joseph and Hyrum plus we do have many witnesses saying that it was not 132. So, so I know that some people think that’s a slam dunk case. It absolutely is not, right? And those who Those who claim that we can go into those in another discussion, probably not getting into Leonard Sobi or those things today because those are deep dives, but I, but I think it is safe to say everyone who claims that at 132 had ulterior motives. We can find ulterior motives for all of them.

[59:16] Whitney Horning: Yes, I’m so. Absolutely. And what’s interesting to me is if you go back and read the city council minutes where they’re trying to unders they’re trying to discuss what to do about the expositor, um, the Novo neighbor prints a whole transcript of it, and again, and that’s really where we get the, the majority of, because I don’t think the menace themselves were that great, but I think that they, when they read it in the paper, but that’s where we get Joseph explaining that he was pondering on the scripture. Um, neither are they married nor given in marriage, but are angels in heaven when he received and and the the revelation he received. I believe no, I don’t have Joseph’s words on this, but as I pondered in as I studied that scripture. I believe that’s the scripture where the Pharisees or the Sadducees, one of those, are trying to trip up Jesus. And so they give him the example of the liberate marriage, where they say, what if a woman marries a man and he dies, and then she marries his brother tells she’s married 7 brothers and they all die. Whose is she in heaven? And Jesus says, you don’t understand the resurrection, you know, neither are they married nor given a marriage, but there is the angels. Well, that was because Just because Jesus said that doesn’t mean that we’re all gonna be angels. What he was truly saying was, and that’s why Joseph’s pondering it, because Joseph’s like, is that really true? you know, and so he’s pondering on that, and he receives the revelation, the marriage had fallen outside of God’s rule and authority. And now I don’t mean rule like rule. I mean his boundaries, his, his um a a rule stick, his measuring stick, his rule, um, that marriage was to be, we are created in God’s image, we are to be in monogamous relationships as he is, and so marriage had fallen outside of his boundaries, his authority, his Um, his power, and so what good would it have done to tell these Pharisees and Saddus who couldn’t even accept that they’re talking to the Messiah, what good would it have done for Jesus to explain to them. One marriage. Well,

[1:01:40] Michelle: OK, I want to hear a little more what you’re talking about, but I do want to clarify the Sadducees were the ones asking that question, and they didn’t believe in eternal life. They didn’t even believe resurrection,

[1:01:49] Whitney Horning: right? Yeah, so,

[1:01:50] Michelle: so they, they were making the point of how ridiculous the idea of eternal life is because they were having the assumption that if there’s eternal life, obviously there’s eternal marriage, right? That’s what they actually, and it’s so interesting because Brigham Young later referenced that to kind of defend polygamy, not realizing it’s the opposite. It’s a woman with 7 husbands, not husbands, not a man with 7 wives. So the whole thing is so ironic in so many ways. But I think it is good to recognize that these people didn’t even believe in eternal marriage. So I think what you’re saying is, why would he go on to teach them? I mean, they didn’t even believe in eternal life, so why would he say anything to them about eternal marriage? But I do want you to When you say marriage had fallen out of God’s rule or lot, do you mean just lever at marriage, or what what do you mean by that? Like um

[1:02:45] Whitney Horning: there was no authority left. So when Christ comes, I mean, the, the people have corrupted the religion and their ordinances to the point where it was that ordinance was no longer part of nor one that God could recognize. OK, so

[1:03:03] Michelle: they didn’t have the healing power is another way of saying that.

[1:03:07] Whitney Horning: Yeah, that’s a great way of saying it. Mhm.

[1:03:09] Michelle: OK. Yes, OK. And so, yeah, so we do need to study out what Jesus meant by that, you know, and that’s what Joseph was doing and came up with. And I will acknowledge, like the idea of eternal marriage complicates things, right? Just like it does for widows now, and it did for Hiram and other widowers, you know, it’s, it’s more complicated. It leaves us all, no matter how we approach it, saying, God’s gonna have a lot to work out that we don’t understand, you know. But at the same time, the idea of all marriages being dissolved also complicates things because then what is the purpose of this and to become one and then when your spouse dies, you don’t have hope of Being, you know, being with them in the next life. So, so there’s not like an easy way around this to go, oh, that would solve it. It’s complicated and we all need to seek more revelation and more understanding for ourselves and our own circumstances,

[1:04:02] Whitney Horning: I think. Yeah, and my heart, my heart goes out to those people, um. That first heard this from Joseph, because it was a very, you can tell, I mean, we only have um notes from Thomas Bullock of what Hyrum said to the to the elders, but you can feel his consternation, you can feel this, um, you know, it was very upsetting to him that the idea of choosing. Or the idea of not having a spouse with him. And so, you know, I think that we, we’ve been handed down these generations of teachings and, you know, in many ways we’ve we’ve simplified it yet maybe also complicated it. But like we, those of us who are born in Svius church or who have been longtime converts and have attended the temple and have studied um what the temple has to offer us. I think we don’t, we do a disservice when we think the early saints were excited and eager to hear these new teachings. Oh, I think it’s very complicated for a lot of them. A lot of, especially in those days, a lot of them had spouses who had already died. Brigham You had a wife who had already passed away. And so I, I think even like today, like, you know, we have a lot of times the, the topic of polygamy. A lot of times in conversation with people, it’s brought up why doesn’t the church completely denounce it in every way. Because they still allow it to take place in the temple, you know, they still allow men to be still to more than one wife if their wife has passed away or if they’re divorced. Well, we have our own president of the church who’s married to a second wife. And so these are not easy matters. This is something I think we would do well to have much more mercy and compassion. That these are difficult things and it isn’t it isn’t cut and dried, or we can say, oh just stand up and denounce it. Well, if President Nelson were to stand up and completely denounce it, is he denouncing Wendy or his first wife? And so, you know, we do need to have more compassion, but also an understanding that They don’t have it figured out. I don’t believe that the LDS church really understands it either themselves, and so we really just, we really just need God’s mercy and grace to. Yes, I’ll give that to figure this out eventually.

[1:06:51] Michelle: You’re right. I like to say we all know a lot less than we think we know or claim to know. That’s

[1:06:55] Whitney Horning: that’s the attitude. Mhm.

[1:06:58] Michelle: Yeah. And I do want to also clarify, so from what, another thing that I think that we have made this more problematic is we don’t know from Joseph’s revelation that was read that he and Hyrum both spoke out that we claim is 132, you know. I don’t know that that eternal marriage necessarily included this exaltation and you become God by having, so I think we’ve attached too much to it as well to where we think that like, like from what Joseph was saying it was like, like eternal marriage was kind of similar to and maybe sort of an addition to baptism for the dead, right? Like. You can be baptized for your dead and you can be sealed to each other or to your dead spouse, right, if they died before this was brought forward. But I don’t see where it attached exaltation as a like a higher level of salvation. It may, maybe I’m, but you know what I mean, I think we’ve attached all of that additionally to it, where Brigham really intermingled exaltation with polygamy. Like Brigham very clearly said, the only men who become gods or sons of gods are those who are polygamists, at least in their heart, if not in reality, right? Like he turned polygamy into syno to synonymous with exaltation. And I think we need to maybe think that through and kind of Let that go. Because while I do think we need to be sympathetic to, say, President Nelson and President Oakes, it would be lovely if they could also be sympathetic to widows who are in, you know, like,

[1:08:30] Whitney Horning: exactly. And why not? If the men can, exactly. If they don’t understand it themselves, then be compassionate to those who are this issue today.

[1:08:42] Michelle: Absolutely. And even more particularly, maybe the husbands of widows, men who have married a widow who are without their exaltation because they’re without their ceiling, and they’re raising up sons to the first husband in this silly, I’m, I’m sorry, but this, it’s kind of a restatement of lever at marriage and not understanding it at all, right? And, and turning it into polygamy in this goofy way. So, so anyway, OK, can we go back to Mary, um, coming west, Mary marrying Hebrew. So we did point out that Mary coming west should not be taken as her testimony of plural marriage or this doctrine. She already had moved to be with her siblings. She was Impoverished and also it seems to me, and maybe you’d know more about this, there maybe were some struggles with Mary and the Smith family. Like I know that Emma and Mary maybe had a little bit of friction. Emma, I believe, didn’t invite Mary to something, maybe not the funeral, but something to do with, oh, I read it in Emma’s um Emma’s biography, so I’ll have to remember what it was. And there was potentially some, there were some concerns that maybe Mary was kind of the not a kind stepmother to those children, and I do wanna say. Being a stepmother is incredibly difficult, particularly in the situation that Mary was in, and the fact that she was willing to take it on. And I don’t know that those children that Hyrum and Jerus’s children said anything hard against Mary. So I feel a little bad that she faced judgment because I think that’s so hard to do. And she probably tried her best, and we have stories of her also, just like Emma was chased out of homes. Wasn’t it Mary that was on a mattress in the rain with her newborn and her toddler and like

[1:10:35] Whitney Horning: she was Sael’s wife.

[1:10:37] Michelle: Oh, OK, OK. I’m getting that mixed up.

[1:10:40] Whitney Horning: But Mary Fielding, she was 8 months pregnant when Hiram was taken captive. The family was all sick. He was home taking care of him and a trusted church member. Came with the Missouri militia and arrested Him and took him to liberty and it put the stress of it put Mary into premature labor. So she had her baby. They, they calculate maybe a month or so early. Um, but Yeah, I’ve, I’ve wondered how the Smith family felt about her. I know that when Hyrum was in Liberty jail, Mary didn’t write him once. And later her, she was, she seemed to be very practical by nature, and she said, well, people tell me you’re gonna be home any day. You know, but then also I think that

[1:11:34] Michelle: what we should clarify that Hirum suffered horribly as a result of not getting better. I mean, they were already suffering,

[1:11:41] Whitney Horning: but he’s on a mission when Jerusha dies and then he’s hearing nothing from Mary. And so there is a letter between him and his brother, his younger brother Don Carlos, and Don Carlos, it sounds like Hiyer maybe had written to him and asked him to go check on Mary and see if she had abandoned him. And so Don Carlos does, and his first letter seems to allude to that, and we don’t have that one, but that letter because the second letter refers to the first letter, where they did believe that maybe Mary had abandoned the family and abandoned Hirum. And um so some of Hyrum’s letters to Mary are, I, you know, I thought we were friends and you know, you, you can ban

[1:12:21] Michelle: and where are my children? Are my children OK?

[1:12:24] Whitney Horning: He doesn’t know he’s in this jail and all he’s hearing are reports of atrocities. Being visited on the Saints. I mean, I, I, he said he was so the anxiety and the stress was so much that he lost sleep, he had insomnia, he was, he was shaking nerves, he was shaking, he could hardly write. So Don Carlos finally writes him eventually and says he’s been able to to visit with Mary and that she hasn’t abandoned him and that he considers that she’s still a friend of the family, but I do think there’s just those little things that, and I think with Mary being more of a sickly person and being bedridden often. You know, I think, and I think The church in that day wasn’t as it is today. Today I don’t know if I’d ever be in the same room as President Nelson, let alone his family, but in those days, in the early days of the church, there was much, much more likely chance and people it’s almost like being in a small town where everybody knows your business, and so just envision Mary marries into this family. And it’s uh quite a large family. They’re very close. They all adore Jerusha, and they’re

[1:13:43] Michelle: incredibly hardworking, high

[1:13:45] Whitney Horning: right like right and then here comes Mary, and it’s just immediately after they get married they’re driven out of Kirtland and then she’s, you know, a year or so later she’s now 8 months pregnant. Her husband’s taken captive, and then they’re driven to Nabu, so it’s just lost after loss after loss, and then And you’ve got all the whispers and the rumors and the unkind saints who look for every little fault in you and make sure to let you know what it is and so I just, I don’t know, I, I just goes out.

[1:14:22] Michelle: Mine too. I just wanted to kind of paint the story again of her coming west because also, I know that is it in Da Don Carlos’ letter as well. I think Mercy had moved in with Mary and there was concern, so she was relying on her siblings and, you know, and there was concern about that. Like, I don’t. Having mercy there is good. It’s a good situation for Hirum’s children and, you know, so I think that there was a little bit of pull and distance like Mary was coming into a very difficult situation in the Smith family to come in when Jurusha had been lost and, you know, and then. And was relying on her family. So it’s not that surprising that she went west, I guess is what her connections.

[1:15:04] Whitney Horning: She’d been really good friends with, um, Hebrew C Kimba and and his wife Eli. Um, she has, there’s letters that writes to Hebrew when they’re in Kerlin and and talks about Mary and what a wonderful person she is. So those are her friends and she may not know what they’re doing in the back bedroom. Right, she just knows them as people who are kind to her, who’ve helped her out. Again, I think it’s telling that she gets to Utah and within by the next summer, she’s gone and she lives away from the saints. And kind of just, so I think that’s telling that

[1:15:44] Michelle: if she didn’t want to join with them. Yeah. And, OK. OK. And also, um, so we, our claim is that we have so many claims that, um, Hebrew and Brigham and that the polygamy was to take care of the widows as if God says widows have to sleep with you in order to be taken care of, right? It’s just silly. But let’s talk about Mary in that context. She calls herself the poorest of all of the saints. As you said, um, Joseph F. Smith, who was her first born, right? He had health problems his whole life because he was raised on skim milk, because of his lack of nutrition as a young boy. She was so poor and she had no help. Coming to Utah. She had like, we have her wonderful stories of miracles, right? But she didn’t like Hebrew

[1:16:33] Whitney Horning: are those are a little exaggerated, you know, we love faithful faith promoting stories to not to take away from her at all, but she did hire two able bodied men who were driving her team and helping get her here. So she wasn’t driving it by herself, which a lot of people like to to claim. Um she did have two men helping her, but she does write about that she is the poorest of church members, that she’s embarrassed by her indigent circumstances. And so again, that to me was a red flag of the Kimble family claims that that their patriarch Hebrewy was marrying all these widows to provide for them and take care of them. Right, and where’s the care uh for Mary?

[1:17:22] Michelle: There, there was no, there wasn’t, so Hirum’s and, and Joseph’s widows were left in complete destitute. Emma was given all of the debts, right? And, um, and Mary was left to her own devices from everything we know, right? They were not providing. That’s an important thing to recognize for all of our excuses we want to make up the reasons for polygamy. So, OK, so there is no evidence that she was married actually to Here in any sense, right? He didn’t provide for her, he didn’t.

[1:17:56] Whitney Horning: The only, the only evidence that there is. Because the only evidence is at her funeral. Brigham Young is a beautiful talk. It’s a really, it’s just a really beautiful tribute to, but hey Kimball, it is worth looking up and reading these because Herey Kimble then gets up and The entire talk is him bragging about his prowess as a polygamous husband, and that Mary would travel to Salt Lake to have her needs taken care of. Oh only proof at her funeral? Yes, it is very upsetting to me to read that because I don’t believe it actually was true. And, and I just think that

[1:18:49] Michelle: that’s if it were, he wouldn’t say it, he wouldn’t say it at her funeral if it no husband would. OK, so that’s the only evidence is after she said. Now let’s talk about the timeline because this was fascinating. So we’ll remind everyone, August of 1852 is when the special conference was held when section, well, I can’t even call it section 132 because it wasn’t added.

[1:19:12] Whitney Horning: It wasn’t. That’s really important. So 18

[1:19:18] Michelle: it wasn’t,

[1:19:19] Whitney Horning: it’s not,

[1:19:19] Michelle: it wasn’t. Yeah, it’s not, it wasn’t section 132. It was the revelation on polygamy that they attributed to Joseph Smith, but that nobody had seen until the special conference in 1852. Mary never left any kind of testimony that Hiram had other wives, right, of any kind. And all of, all of Hirum’s and Joseph’s, you know, family members claimed that he was, well, I should say all of Joseph’s family members. Claimed that he didn’t have any other wives. So the timing here, that was held in August, in July, I believe, is when Mary was so sick that she moved in with the um Kimbles, right, to be cared for by them. So really, they like, like I thought it was interesting because there is the question of why August 1852, why was the revelation brought forward then, you know, like the timing is interesting. We don’t

[1:20:15] Whitney Horning: she didn’t die until September, but I don’t know if she was right

[1:20:19] Michelle: she’s in their home. Home. They like the fact that she’s in their home, they really, I don’t want to paint any, you know, dark pictures that we don’t know. But the fact is she’s in their home, bedridden on her deathbed. They have complete control over her, who can see her, what she can, right? She wouldn’t know what’s going on. So there is something to the fact that here’s the last. Person with firsthand information about Hiram. Yeah Hirum’s marriage, right? And it’s when she is no longer able to have a voice that the revelation is brought forward. That’s interesting.

[1:20:59] Whitney Horning: Yeah, like I thought it was very interesting also. Cause I wondered too, what what was so special about August 1852?

[1:21:09] Michelle: Yeah, and so while she didn’t die until September, when I learned that she was in their home, I was like

[1:21:16] Whitney Horning: very sick. Yeah,

[1:21:19] Michelle: like that’s really interesting. OK, so, so I think that’s an important thing to understand. So Mary never and And another thing that’s interesting is all of the focus on Joseph’s polygamy and he had what I mean the claims go between 30 wives to 45 wives depending on, you know, it’s so silly, but um. But it’s interesting that Hiram is so ignored because here we have all of this like Hiram was the co-president with Joseph. Hirum was absolutely Joseph’s right hand man, right? Like they were as close as it’s possible to be. There was never, it’s not until later with Brigham making claims of Hirum saying things that Joseph didn’t like that never actually happened.

[1:22:02] Whitney Horning: Well they were, I would say Hiram was next to Emma, Joseph’s closest confidant.

[1:22:08] Michelle: Mhm, yeah, OK, OK, and you’ve studied it as much as anyone has. So I think it’s so strange that we attribute all of these wives to Joseph and then Brigham and Here and we ignore, like if this were a true principle that Joseph had revealed and that he, you know, Hirum would be like the number 2 guy. If Joseph had 30 wives, Hirum would have 20, right? Like.

[1:22:34] Whitney Horning: Right, and it is very interesting, um. So, But Nava Temple, they recorded their ceilings. And

[1:22:47] Michelle: I was in January of January of 1846, those are when they were sealing everybody

[1:22:54] Whitney Horning: frantically, right? And so, um, Brigham and Ebra had those recorded. I was able to obtain um digital images from um Gary Bruguera, but I’m not there those typically are very difficult to be allowed to go see with your own the ceiling

[1:23:14] Michelle: records. I’ve got I’ve gone and seen them. I have pictures of them,

[1:23:20] Whitney Horning: uh-huh so it’s interesting that they say that um. The Joseph F. Smith, so 1869, he’s an apostle, as, you know, as we know, the cousins, so Joseph Smith the 3rd is his cousin, cousins are coming out to Utah, and they’re claiming that Joseph never did polygamy. Joseph S. Smith decides to go get these affidavits. He also was the one who edited the Navu Temple ceiling records. So I found that interesting, but I find it interesting also that Hiram was sealed to, I think 6 or 7, according to the Nabu Tele records, 6 or 7 women, but the LDS Church only claims 4 as his wives, and they claim Jerusha, that’s an obvious one that would be hard not to claim because they’re, you know, they were legitimately know that, and then she passes away in Mary. And then they claimed that while he was married to Mary, he was married to her sister Mercy, and then to a woman named Catherine. And I find it interesting that They wouldn’t, like you said, like, why wouldn’t they claim these other women who were still into him after he was dead. And so I find that very fascinating. So I researched some of those women, and two of them had left the church by 1869, so I thought, well, maybe that’s why they didn’t want to go chase them down for affidavits. Because

[1:25:00] Michelle: the idea they wouldn’t have needed to, not, not every supposed wife of Joseph Smith left an affidavit. They would still claim it, but go

[1:25:07] Whitney Horning: ahead, right, right. But I do think that the um that the church tends to Um, They, they tend to give the reason for the January 1846 ceilings. They call them, um, repeated ceilings or redone ceilings. Well, again, if we understand what the Holy Spirit of promise is, we understand what the ceiling ordinance is. Why is there any need to redo that for anyone? Mhm. Joseph and Hirum had done that for someone. It was done and it wouldn’t be no reason to redo it. And so that to me right there calls into question whether these were actually first time ceilings and all of the women who they claim were sealed to Joseph were done in that January, February time frame. And so that to me is suspect. It also is with Hiram. So then you’re left with the two that the church claims, and that’s his sister-in-law Mercy. And this woman Katherine, well, you have to understand her politics. Her nephew and Hirum’s son Joseph F is the one gathering the affidavits, so that only makes sense that Mercy would be like, sure, I’ll do an affidavit for you. She claims that she in that affidavit, she, you know, was married or stilled to him. She claims and later reminiscences that she um was sealed to him that that he had had a dream about her deceased husband. She had had a dream about her deceased husband and that that theirs was to be a marriage. Um, again, to like the idea of raising up seed to her deceased husband, she never has any other children besides the one daughter with her first husband, um. She also has another reminiscence where she never claims to have been still to Hirum. Then her, if you go look at her brother Joseph Fielding’s journal, during the time frame in Navo that she was supposedly living as a wife to hire him in their home, Joseph Fielding records that he went to visit his sister at her little house out on her farm. So her own brother negates her story that she lived, you know, not intentionally because he was recording it live at the time it happened, and there was nothing happening, so he wasn’t recording it. So, mercy is obviously very suspect because she’s trying to um encourage the church to follow the prophet president who is, you know, a polygamist and now her own nephew is in power and he’s an apostle, and he’s gathering the affidavits, so you have to take all of that into consideration when you consider a first story. So she does feed herself. She does actually record in different places. Yes, I was, no, I wasn’t, you know, so her story up.

[1:28:23] Michelle: So in any case, it’s extremely complicated. I think I, I always want to help people try our best to get into this mindset of these people who are in Utah, which is its own world. There is no way. Do you know what I mean? They’re not hearing other voices. They don’t have television. They don’t have, you know, they are here being steeped in this doctrine, day after day after day, being told they need to defend the kingdom, being right and it’s the only voice they’re hearing. So, They were more isolated than the FLDS and RD, right? Like you have to,

[1:28:58] Whitney Horning: I agree with that. Yes.

[1:28:59] Michelle: Yeah, they didn’t, they, they didn’t have Saint George half an hour away. They were like there, it was inaccessible to leave, right? And they didn’t have, um, any digital media or even much print media. So they were completely here, isolated. Mercy had been steeped in this, just like the other women for this many years was completely dependent on this system. Right? And it wasn’t, there is no, there’s nothing from Mary or Mercy anywhere, claiming that they were sister wives in any way. Mary has two children with Hiram. Again, Mercy has none, right? And so it’s not until Mary has passed away and Mercy’s an older woman. In Utah, in this culture with Joseph F wanting affidavits that she gives an affidavit, right? That, that, as you said, contradicts any records earlier. There are no records of her being sealed to Hiram and of any kind except her own affidavit in 1869, right? And then which she later contradicts, and which is, so in a lot of ways,

[1:30:08] Whitney Horning: Hiri does write a reminiscence at the, I think it’s 18. It’s like the 50 year Jubilee, so 1880. She does write a reminiscence and in that she does claim. But it’s an interesting reminiscence because it’s very boastful about looking at all the things I’ve done for the kingdom, and one of those was that I was the first woman sealed to my deceased spouse by proxy, and then I was still to Hiram. So she does now so we can see, so she does reminiscences and one there’s no mention at all and then and in that one she actually the one where she doesn’t mention it, she actually does explain that her sister Mary stood as proxy. OK, right, so it does kind of support what Joseph’s journal and then Hirum himself said. Um, and then it doesn’t tell this other reminiscence, and that first one’s undated, and the 2nd 1, 1880, it’s a jubilee of the church is again, you know, the church, we are we are the true church. We also need to realize all the competition between the Utah church and the reorganized church with Joseph the Third, so there’s that going on.

[1:31:26] Michelle: And the competition within the church of wanting to be important. This was your how to have some kind of support from the church or to be looked up well upon. Like we really were in this hierarchical structure by now, where you were desperate for some standing. So her building herself up like that makes sense. Continue with what you were saying.

[1:31:46] Whitney Horning: So then just a second, the only other woman that took an affidavit, and this one I find is extremely curious to me, um. Let me find your name. I’ve got it on here.

[1:31:59] Michelle: I can look it up too. Is this Katherine?

[1:32:02] Whitney Horning: Yes, it was Catherine, I don’t think it it’s Phillips, it’s Catherine,

[1:32:08] Michelle: Catherine Smith, no, that’s someone else. Oh yeah, um, is it Catherine, Catherine Smith Salisbury?

[1:32:16] Whitney Horning: No, that’s the sister. So Katherine Phillips. OK, Phillips. So I find this I’m just very curious because she’s not in the Nu temple proxy ceilings but. But, OK, it’s interesting because they’re redoing everybody else’s feelings supposedly. I believe they’re doing it for the first time. So she’s not in that book, but in 19 and it’s in 1902, November 7th, 1902, she swears out an affidavit claiming that she was still to hire him as a plural wife in August 1843. She doesn’t give an exact date. She claimed she lived with him as a wife, but in consequence of the strong feeling manifested at the time against plural marriage, she claimed she moved to Saint Louis near the close of the year. Where she claimed she was living when Joseph and Hyrum were massacred. So I find this interesting. She does an affidavit on November 7th, 1902. In the affidavit, she, she calls people sister Stone and her daughter Hetty. Then in January, so now two months later, January 28th, 1903. She does the exact same affidavit, but signed by a different judge, same exact affidavit, but and then this time they wrote in the name of the stones who were the supposed witnesses as Robert.

[1:33:46] Michelle: So those witnesses were people who could attest to the truthfulness that she was married to them. That’s what she was using them for.

[1:33:53] Whitney Horning: Right, so if you go and she and she claims that their daughter Hetty. So if you go and look at their genealogy. Hetty, oh well, she said she was, I don’t think, I think she just says Hetty and Julia were the witnesses. So Julia Stone and her daughter Hetty were the witnesses to Katherine Phillips stealing to to Hiram. Um, Hetty would have been like a 9 year old girl at the time. She had older sisters, so why wouldn’t you have asked the older sisters.

[1:34:28] Michelle: You would you’re gonna have a 9 year old girl be an official witness to a ceiling in 18,

[1:34:35] Whitney Horning: but it’s interesting because that Hetty is deceased by the time this affidavit’s taken out. And the older sister is alive, but isn’t one of the witnesses. So I, I just find that very

[1:34:49] Michelle: that I do want to say that seems to be a pattern. That is an ongoing pattern that people leave an affidavit after anyone who could. Possibly refute or validate it is dead. That’s just like 1852 was brought forth after Mary Fielding was dead, right? Mary Fielding Smith. And this again follows that same pattern. She chooses Hetty, who was 9 at the time because Hetty had passed away. And so,

[1:35:16] Whitney Horning: right,

[1:35:17] Michelle: she could say.

[1:35:18] Whitney Horning: It is interesting to me that Catherine does use the Smith name in like census records. So before even in this affidavit, she was going by Katherine Smith, but again, like I can’t, I haven’t done a deep dive into her to see if she ever was married. It doesn’t appear that she ever actually was married. Um, and so she would have, and she would have been a pretty elderly lady. I think she’s in her 80s by the time she takes out this affidavit, but again, I’m like, why not in 1869? Where was she in 1869? So. And

[1:35:55] Michelle: why not in 1846 in the temple? Why wasn’t she sealed in the temple record?

[1:36:00] Whitney Horning: I just find that really interesting that she wasn’t so the LDS church only claims those two.

[1:36:07] Michelle: OK, so So the the 1846 when Hebrew and Brigham were were doing all of the repeating all of Joseph’s and Hiram’s ceilings, they married um different women to Hebrew. Did you say it was a total of 6, like Jerusha and Mary and then Mercy and then three other women. And

[1:36:28] Whitney Horning: then so not Catherine, she’s not sealed, so she’s not Catherine. They have, they do a woman named Louisa Sangers. So she is sealed to Hirum and then married and sealed for time to Ruben Miller as a polygamist wife. On that same that same um ceiling ceremony, um, she actually Um, and then there’s, um, Susan Ivers, and Susan Ivers in January of 1846 is sealed to the deceasedyrum with Edward Tuttle standing as proxy, and then is sealed to Edward Tuttle, becoming his second polygamist wife. OK, wife. Um, and then she actually does, she, uh, also leaves the LDS Church, so she’s out of the church by 1869. And there’s a woman named Polly Miller. Who was um sealed to Ireland after his death in 1846, and then she is sealed to a man named Samuel and becomes his um I think she becomes his 9th and last plural wife. So Samuel Bent, so all of these women. Our polygamist wives, other men, but they’re still to hire him first and then still to these men. And

[1:37:57] Michelle: then with all of them, is there any evidence, a journal entry, an address, and any evidence at all that they were in any way connected to Hirum? OK, OK, so it’s just this 1846 out of the blue we’re gonna start sealing people. So that we can then marry them as polygamous wives and, and that’s all we, OK.

[1:38:20] Whitney Horning: And the last one was Lydia Granger, and she actually, um, she actually is sealed to Hiram and then sealed to John Taylor and becomes John Taylor’s 9th wife, and she’s a widow. Her husband passed away, um, so

[1:38:37] Michelle: she’s not sealed to her deceased husband.

[1:38:40] Whitney Horning: I should go look and see. I was just looking for who was sealed to Him.

[1:38:47] Michelle: So she couldn’t be sealed to more than one man. So it’s interesting that she should have been sealed to her deceased husband instead of

[1:38:53] Whitney Horning: I’ve wondered thinking about that because I do believe that I personally believe that all of the women besides Emma who were still to Joseph and all of the women besides Jerusha who were still to hirem. I do not believe we’re ever. Married or seal to them while they were living. So I started wondering, it’s an interesting concept to me why you would want to be sealed to a man as a wife. So I did some looking into because because a lot of things are born out all the correct tradition that then gets corrupted. And it is interesting and fascinating to me that the Catholic Church. Does have their nuns. Mary Jesus.

[1:39:40] Michelle: Right, right, they absolutely

[1:39:42] Whitney Horning: are considered the bride of Christ, and some, some nuns I’ve read some nuns blogs, um, when I was researching into this, that just believe it’s like, you know, the, the church is the bride of Christ. They don’t consider themselves actually married to, but there are some who do, and they actually wear a white gown and call it their wedding gown, and they have a wedding ring, and they wear a wedding ring, so. Brigham and Hebrew and and the 12 who were doing this, I don’t think this is a new concept, and you can’t see that relic in the Catholic Church. So there is something about that there that I just think we have not enough information. Joseph didn’t leave anything behind about what ceilings were higher and certainly didn’t leave any records or anything behind about it. And so I, I do think that it is just really um Really going out on a limb to claim that these were women that they were married to and especially to claim that they were having sexual relations with anyone other than their lawful wives who they loved and cherished. These were men of honor and integrity. Hiram Smith was known as a man of integrity. Anybody who ever talked about him, called him a man of great integrity. So to think that he was lying in any way, and I find it interesting that the the church. The LDS Church will claim they claimed that up until 1842, and really 1843 when Hiram read the revelation, that Hiram was dead set against polygamy, and so they claimed that Joseph was just doing it behind his back and that Joseph was, oh, he’ll he’ll join us someday boys.

[1:41:31] Michelle: Brigham was his confidant cause Hiram wouldn’t get on board and that that dialogue that narrative all comes from Brigham’s speeches in Salt Lake when again. Joseph or Hirum isn’t there to contradict him. OK,

[1:41:43] Whitney Horning: correct, correct. So, um, I just, Hiram, like you said, Hirum was actually almost more of a staunch defender of his brother. I, I think of it like this. Joseph and Emma knew who Joseph was. And when you know who you are and you know you’re not doing those things, you don’t go around trying to refute every rumor said about you. It really is. Joseph and Emma really get into the The condemnation, I mean, they condemned polygamy as a crime. They condemned it as an immoral practice. But as far as feeling the need to stand up and defend themselves, they really don’t get into that arena until Hirum is brought into it. And then they’re there to defend Hiram. Like there you can just feel Emma and Joseph’s outrage and incense because they know who Hiram is. They know he is a loyal, trustworthy man who has been completely faithful to his marriage covenants. And so I find that that was just very interesting and that’s when the voice of innocence gets written right to defend.

[1:42:57] Michelle: So let’s go, let’s go into that a little bit because, um, so I think, I think you’re right, that was, that’s part for me part of the evidence of this is. People would be hard pressed to find any claims or evidence of Emma being anything other than a lovely woman of great integrity and service and selflessness, right? So her testimony can’t be thrown away, right? The same is true. The same is true of Hiram. Like you would be hard pressed to find people saying bad things about Hiram. He was just like, they talked so much about what a peacemaker he is, how honorable he was, his, like his entire life shows this just goodness, this depth of goodness, right? And

[1:43:41] Whitney Horning: he was, he was he exactly. He was the epitome of what? We as Christians should be as people who love the Lord and are trying to follow the Lord. Hiram was that to the point where Joseph recorded his name in the book of the law of the Lord as someone we should all pattern our lives after.

[1:44:04] Michelle: OK.

[1:44:05] Whitney Horning: I mean, Hiram was just a really good man.

[1:44:11] Michelle: He and even when you read his letters from, I think was at Liberty Jail where Mary wasn’t writing to him, he’s so loving and like he doesn’t know if his children are alive or dead, all of them, you know, he doesn’t know, he can’t get word. He has asked again and again for a letter. And he keeps just with compassion and please write to me. I, I, you know, he doesn’t get after her. He like, he’s just everything you read about him or from him testifies of his goodness, I think. Yes. And so, so I want to talk about a couple of things. So again, well, there are two different things I want to go to Bostwick’s claims that you were bringing up and then also Hirum’s, um, sermons about polygamy. So let’s remember both of those. We can start with Bost. Because that is the only, um, claim I’m aware of like during Joseph’s life, Joseph and Hiram’s life, we have John C. Bennett, we have the laws claiming that Joseph was engaging in polygamy. All of them were very motivated enemies of Joseph, right? Who, who we have a pattern of deception in their lives, just like we do with, with all of the Utah Saints. We know that they lied because their story changed, right? So Um, so anyway, and whereas Hirum’s, Joseph’s and Emma’s stories never changed, they were consistent throughout their lives. So I want to know with Hirum, is Boswick the only claim we have of Hirum’s polygamy, and let’s tell that story.

[1:45:37] Whitney Horning: So Arsonist Bostwick is He’s so a man named um John Scott comes to Hiram and Joseph and tells them that he heard Orsemus Bostwick slandering Hirum and the women of Navo. And what Boswick was purportedly saying was that Hirum was a polygamist that he had numerous spiritual wives, and he also was saying the women of Nu are so loose with their morals that if any man gives them a bushel of wheat. She’ll go to bed with him. So this claim comes to Joseph and Emma, and they Um, actually, they sue Bostwick in court for slander. He’s found guilty of slander. Which to be found to slander means they found Him innocent of having spiritual wives.

[1:46:42] Michelle: OK. Right. Right. And again, a lawsuit is a big deal because if you’re lying and you sue someone, you’re opening yourself up to have to testify to, you know, like people who are guilty don’t sue for people claiming. Yeah, OK, go ahead. OK.

[1:46:59] Whitney Horning: So Boswick is found guilty of slander. He’s fined, and then They’re so Emma and Joseph are so, I’m gonna, I feel like I feel like they’re so incensed by this that they ask William W. Phelps to write the Voice of Innocence, and then Emma edits it, and then they read it to the entire congregation of saints, and then they ask them to say amen, and they do, it’s unanimous and amen, which. Yes, and that’s that’s their way of voting. So by saying that they’re saying we agree and that pamphlet. Puts down spiritual library, polygamy, prostitution. That it it’s a um pro monogamy. I mean, you read why and you cannot come away thinking. That these people have anything to do with lumy.

[1:47:53] Michelle: No, it basically downs them to hell and tells people to kick them out of the community, don’t associate anyone saying anything to do with this. So to claim, like the only thing it could be is like the most. Blatant lying, right? Like if, if they were actually polygamists when they did this, like there’s no way to believe that. There’s no way to believe like we we kind of tell the fuzzy story that Emma did this because she was so upset at Joseph and she was using the study. So it was kind of Emma on her own. It’s important to recognize this was Joseph and Emma. In response to the claims of Hirum’s polygamy. So there is no way to explain this away,

[1:48:38] Whitney Horning: right? Right. It was Joseph had it read to the saints, and then Emma took it to the relief

[1:48:44] Michelle: Society, and he presided over that meeting. He was on the stand presiding over that meeting where he had

[1:48:49] Whitney Horning: overflowing to the point where they said, OK, not they couldn’t, they didn’t have enough room for all the women who want to be there. So they held it twice that first time I think they did 3 weeks later they did 2 more. So 4 times where all the women agreed. To accept it and said amen to it, and then they printed it in the paper. So that’s the first time we have on public record. I mean, you know, you could say that when when Bennett and others were claiming the heads of the church said it’s OK, you could say that the heads of the church were Joseph and Hirum, but people pretty much understood that to be Joseph, and again, they didn’t recognize or honor Hirum. As as a leader or a head of the church, while they thought well of him in his integrity. It really shows the saints even then wanted this one profit model. They didn’t like, I don’t think they like the idea that they all wanted to be prophets, but they didn’t like the idea of it not just being Joseph. It’s, it’s very weird and complicated when you get into this stuff the way they thought, but then you, so that’s that’s February and March of 1842.

[1:50:11] Michelle: 1844, isn’t it? Isn’t that 18, 0, that’s 18

[1:50:14] Whitney Horning: of innocence, I believe is 1842 February of 1872.

[1:50:21] Michelle: That’s I’m looking it up right now and I don’t know why it says 1844, but yeah, I guess it’s 1844. It’s, I think I just read 1842. Let’s see. Um, and in 1842, 19 relief Society members published a statement refuting Bennett’s claims that the church promoted promoted a secret life system over the next two years, more rumors of polygamy and spiritual life re buzzed through Navvivoo and the surrounding area. And then in February 26th in 1844. Thank you. Yeah. So, and I do want to put that actually matters because 42 is kind of when we claimed that Navi polygamy started, you know. By 1844, like these women signing this, I, I guess I’m, maybe you have insight into this. I don’t know that the women that polygamy was. Well known in 1844. Like Brigham and Hebrew had their couple of secret wives, Augustus Cobb and, you know, but, but it wasn’t like all of these women were actually married to these men by this point. That can’t be like, like, so they might have been honestly assenting to the voice of innocence at this point, including Eliza Snow and the others because There wasn’t yet, you know what I mean, the only reason we claimed these women were lying in voice of innocence is cause we claimed they were already married to Joseph. Oh right, that makes sense. So actually, so Eliza Snow didn’t have to have been lying at this point or the other women signing these things. They could have very much been, I think, likely believing, yes, let’s put down these rumors that Bostwick just so we, I mean, that’s so important that Bostwick was the one making the claims that he actually lost in the court of law, which is tough. It’s tough to prove a slander claim, right? So these women, I think in the Voice of Innocence were honest and it’s not until we retroactively claim that Joseph did this, that we, they, we turned these women all into liars.

[1:52:19] Whitney Horning: Yeah, that’s an excellent point. That that is an excellent point to consider. And I think, so Hyer reads the revelation in August 1843 to the high council. I think that A13 till February 1844. That’s when rumors started that OK now Hyrums evolved.

[1:52:40] Michelle: OK,

[1:52:41] Whitney Horning: so, oh, that’s so interesting.

[1:52:43] Michelle: So Hirum read that revelation. I mean not the revelation. He gave a, like, maybe the strongest refutation of polygamy condemning it at that 1843 conference. Like he, that you cannot call that carefully worded denials. There is

[1:52:59] Whitney Horning: nothing careful about April 1844. So you, so you’re right with this August 1843 high counsel. Oh, that Bostwick. So then he stands up in April and they call all the elders home. I mean during that time they had like they, they were doing um high council courts, they were, you know, higher right out letter sometime in 1842 to the same thing, don’t leave your spouses behind. Oh, I did want to talk about, don’t leave them even if they’re nonbeliever, and then he says, people are coming here and men are getting new wives and wives are getting new husbands, and this is adultery.

[1:53:37] Michelle: Can we, can we pause on that for a second because that’s so important. When, so it’s 1842, it’s Hyrum that writes the letter saying it is like there’s no more you wait where you are until you can come as an entire family. No men coming ahead and no wives or husbands. their spouse because they’re not a believer. He, he like very much says this is not going to happen. This is the devil, this is not good, right? I think that that’s what you’re talking about. I think that’s so important because 10 years later, 1852, that special conference. Brigham Young explicitly tells the men that he’s sending on missions to forget that they have a family at home, to never think about them, to, to consider themselves single men, to not consider themselves married at all. So it’s just so interesting. To see that absolute contradiction, right? How Hirum valued families and marriage, even saying if, if they’re not a member who like that revelation we have the the unbelieving, the believing spouse may save their unbelieving spouse, right? Like marriages together. And then we have in 1852 them saying split up families, who cares? And then we go on to the doctrine of a higher priest. If, if a woman can get someone higher in authority to marry her, then she can leave her husband and it’s just so interesting to see how Joseph and Hyrum truly held marriage. In the same high regard that God has it and how this polygamy doctrine just makes a mockery, complete mockery of marriage. Exactly.

[1:55:09] Whitney Horning: So Hiram writes that letter and then he has and I it sometimes. I think maybe 1843, when he writes a letter to the brethren on China Creek. And so a man named Richard Hewitt lives in China Creek. It’s a little branch of the church. And he starts hearing a man who has a certain priesthood can have as many wives as he wants, and they, they’re doing that in Navo. So he actually, he is a great example that if you think someone’s doing something, go to that person and ask. And so he does, he travels to Navo, he meets with Hirum. He asks Him and Hirum says, Basically, not only am I going to tell you the truth, I’m going to write it down so you can take it back. So today, here we are now, a few 100, you know, 100 and so years later, with people that read what Hiram wrote, and in that he says, leave the mysteries of godliness alone. And so then today, Which is so interesting to me that the pro lygamist today claimed that Joseph was using pretzel language, and I think no you are today using pretzel language because they take what Hyrum was talking about and they turned that into see, he was saying. Wink wink. You are, you shouldn’t be dealing with polygamy yet because they’ve equated becoming a god, like you said, the exaltation, they’ve equated that with polygamy. So they’re,

[1:56:44] Michelle: they’re saying that Hiram was saying, just to clarify, Hiram says, I have not given you permission to teach this. Leave the mysteries of God. So they’re saying he’s acknowledging, yes, we’re doing polygamy, but I don’t want you to talk about it.

[1:56:56] Whitney Horning: That’s what polygamist today claim, right? That’s how they interpret that letter. That letter, Richard Hewitt, the man who went and got the letter, he understood that. And in I think it’s 1869. He writes to James Strang, who’s one of the other break-offs from when the church splintered after the death of Joseph and Hiram. And James String, Richard Huwat writes to him, and he states, I know there is no such thing as spiritual wifery. I was in Hiram’s office. I’m the man he gave this letter to. And furthermore, it’s not in the Bible, it’s not in the Book of Mormon, it’s not in the doctrine and covenants.

[1:57:42] Michelle: OK, so the one, the one who would be the most authoritative of what Hiram meant in that letter is the man who had the conversation with him, who the letter was written for, right? So we ignore his testimony and we ignore everything else that Joseph and Hiram said, and we latch on to that one person per piece to turn it inside out and make a false claim. And really, I think, isn’t it wasn’t Hiram what he was talking about is like the things that Hebrewy Kimball, I mean, not that Orson Pratt later started writing about that the church told him, stop writing about these things, the ideas of where God came from and like, like these deep, deep, um, theological meandering.

[1:58:26] Whitney Horning: So yes, but they were, they were trying to understand how a person. Gains celestial exaltation. Um, he’s writing about it to his wife, the late from his mission in England. He, in 1840 tells his wife, I’ve been talking with, you know, William Copeland, Doctor William Copeland and his wife, and he has a fascinating idea, and we call it the principal, and William Copeland was teaching him to get the Saha King to have more wives than one. So you’ve got people were speculating, how do I gain exaltation. Joseph Fielding writes in his journal, Everyone’s trying to figure out how we become a celestial being, and I think we figured it out, but we can’t talk about it yet, and then when does he talk about it after Joseph and Hiram died. So I do think that there was buzzing going around. How do we, you know, how do we become gods in the making of gods, how do we get this special exaltation. And somewhere someone, and I’m thinking it happened with the apostles in England with these converts who are teaching them, well, to give to such a kingdom, you gotta have a lot of wives, and there’s this idea of you get a lot of wives, have a lot of children, and they vote you in. You wanna have a lot, you’re gonna have this big harem that all vote for their dad to be a god. Oh interesting. So there is this going around, even in England, they start calling each other father. And journal I’m trying to look like Father Abraham. So there is this idea. So when Hiram says stop talking about these mysteries, he really did mean it like stop it, like you guys don’t even know what faith and repentance of baptism is like get back to the basics and just. Repent and become a good person and try to become like Christ and all of that will take care of itself. OK, right, but he understands it, right? Because he understands by this time, more than likely Hiram has had his um Redemption experience where he has seen the Lord because he talks about having that he was persecuted for the testimony of Jesus. Well, the testimony of Jesus isn’t just me sending him as I believe in Jesus. In the New Testament is very clear, the testimony of Jesus is Christ appearing to you and bearing testimony to you of who he is and what his role is as savior of the world. So Hiron does understand so much more, and he’s telling these men, you’re so off base if you’re, if all you’re thinking of is I want to get a certain priests I can get lots of women. Then you really need to get back to the first principles and ordinances of the gospel, faith and baptism, repentance. So that’s what that whole letter is really about, and I love that Richard Hulett years later he’s like, yeah, no, there is no plug me. And he even goes on to say in his letter, if anyone teaches such a thing, you can know they’re a false prophet.

[2:01:47] Michelle: OK,

[2:01:48] Whitney Horning: that’s powerful.

[2:01:50] Michelle: So there’s no way Joseph was teaching it then or hiring because they were hiring and Richard

[2:01:54] Whitney Horning: Hewitt’s testimony that those two were true prophets.

[2:01:59] Michelle: Right, OK, OK, so all of these pieces. So then going forward, we have, so, so was that, did you say that was 1842?

[2:02:09] Whitney Horning: So the letter to I don’t know if it’s 42 or 43.

[2:02:12] Michelle: OK, it’s in there. I’m just looking at Hirum’s last year of life, Joseph and Hiram, right? We have the letter to China Creek. We have the claim by Boswick that’s followed by a lawsuit that Boswick lost, right? The only claims of of the Hirum living polygamy. And then we go forward to April of 1844, right, the voice of innocence in February, March, April 1444. They, he calls every, all the elders in for this special conference from

[2:02:40] Whitney Horning: the address they sent it out in the paper and letters worldwide and told him all they want

[2:02:47] Michelle: everyone here. Because they are going to definitively once and for all say, hey, don’t ask us about this anymore because here’s the answer, right? Because he said letters are coming in all the time. It is the most, um, explicit profound denunciation of polygamy and claim that absolutely not, right? And interestingly, that was left out of the church history, the, the official history of the church. Like they edited some of Joseph’s journal entries, but Hirams thinks they just left out.

[2:03:19] Whitney Horning: And so I did the first draft, they did leave it in. And they add stuff about Mary saying when when Hiram says that Mary said I’ll be sealed to you for the one that is dead. They had this whole big thing about Mary saying, and I’ll be sealed to you too, because you’re the only husband I’ve ever had and you’re the only one I’ve ever loved, and so I’ll be sealed to you too. So they turn him into a polygamist at that time. But then interestingly enough that that um Middle draft of the church history, they take that out when they do the actual history. there were

[2:03:55] Michelle: people who remembered it. It could be that there were people who remember being there. It would be too obvious, who knows. So, so in, in any case, Hirum has been neglected from this story. Everyone is so hard on Joseph about his polygamy. Right? And it destroys all these testimonies. And we completely and utterly ignoreyrum, who was his #2 guy. Like, absolutely. Hirum was his closest companion, close to his confidant, like you said, other than Emma, like it was Emma and Joseph and Hiram and Joseph, and Emma and Joseph had a wonderful relationship as well. Right? And so here we have Brigham, who turns Hiram into a doubting, not very smart, not, you know, and turns Emma into the wickedest woman in the world, right? When, when he’s here with the podium. And this, like, Hirum’s life should be some of the strongest evidence we have of both Joseph’s and Hirum’s innocence of the fact that polygamy never was from them and it’s completely neglected. I find, like, I find that fascinating.

[2:05:02] Whitney Horning: 00, there’s,

[2:05:05] Michelle: I’m so glad you wrote this book. I have one more thing I had thought of when I told Whitney before I had this whole list of questions and my computer crashed and it’s nowhere to be found. So we’ve just made this up on the flight, but I think it’s gone really well, so. Um, one other thing that I think is fascinating is how little, like I mentioned, that we know of Joseph’s family, like Lucy and Joseph Senior’s children. We don’t know anything about them. I said a couple of times that we know so little about the Smith family, and I said that badly. I want to clarify quickly. What I meant was, as members of the church, we learn. Almost nothing about the Smith family and Whitney’s work has helped me to learn so much more. So I wasn’t trying to say there isn’t anything that we can know. What I meant was how little we as members of the church know and how much she has brought forth. So, um, so a couple of things that I also think are important testimonies. Well, first of all, it’s heartbreaking that I think didn’t they have 7 sons and only 1. Outlived it, like William was the only son left living. They lost 6 of their 7 sons, which is just tragic. And then they had, was it 3 girls or was it 3 daughters. So Lucy was what, 15 when Joseph and Hyrum were killed, or was she older than that? But no, um, I can’t remember. I’m remembering that she was 15. Anyway, she’s the youngest, like, you know, who lived, so there were those three sisters. And I do want to point out, none, not, not Lucy or Joseph Senior or any of the siblings ever believed or claimed that Joseph was a polygamist, right? They all makes the statement.

[2:06:51] Whitney Horning: William’s the that’s complicated. He does make the statement that Brigham Young was so persuasive, he almost believed his brother Joseph had done it.

[2:07:03] Michelle: OK, he almost got convinced that it

[2:07:05] Whitney Horning: was like almost believed it, right, and there’s the, you know, the jury is out on William. There’s people that say that that he tried to get into polygamy, uh, Brigham Young says he did, he says he didn’t, he has a wife to leave him. Who her story is that she claims that William did try to have them enter into polygamy. Um, so that, so to me that is interesting that his own brother was kind of like he, he’s the one who kind of exposes Burham and Heber in around, you know, after Joseph and Hiram were dead, he’s the one who exposes them.

[2:07:41] Michelle: Yeah, he’s chased out of Navu for exposing Brigham and Hiram. I mean,

[2:07:46] Whitney Horning: right? So it is interesting. So William’s an interesting character, but still he never comes out as my brother did this and my brother taught it to me, never. He never, and in fact when he says I was almost persuaded he did, he says it was Bham Young who almost persuaded him, and then the three sisters, um, some of them take out affidavits years later, you know, when the affidavits in Utah are being made, they take out affidavits claiming their brothers never taught that. Right.

[2:08:19] Michelle: And one thing, one thing I think is important with those girls. So that, so Lucy, I don’t know about her marriage because she was younger. She wasn’t married, I don’t think when Joseph and Hyra were killed or if she was, it was a she was had a happy marriage. But those two older sisters had very problematic husbands and very problematic marriages. And guess what never happened? They were never given as plural wives to a better man. Right, like, right, if If Joseph and Hiram were polygamists, they absolutely would have wanted their sisters to these these available women who either divorced their husbands or their husbands abandoned them, their husband, one of them was an alcoholic, another was a philanderer, right? They would have had these sisters marry polygamously, for sure, if that’s what they believed.

[2:09:08] Whitney Horning: Right? And that’s an excellent point. Exactly. And in fact, they do the opposite. They are continually trying to work with those wayward husbands to get them to repent and to get them to become better men.

[2:09:20] Michelle: Right, it wasn’t just a throwaway marriage that, you know, like you can find someone a better man, right? That’s, I think, I think there is this tendency. I, I have heard personally from multiple women who, you know, like they had some horrible husband that, you know, that they can’t say any good about. I’m saying from their perspective how they talk about them and that they will wait and be sealed to. Like a church leader, a prophet, right? I know other women who are waiting and not marrying because they believe that they will be sealed to, you know, like that is a compelling thing to many women to think, oh, I will have this righteous husband. I am promised to Joseph Smith or to Jesus Christ, like you said about the nuns. I see that happening, right? But, but Joseph’s entire family, the entire Smith family wanted to help these marriages succeed even with these problematic husbands. That’s how they viewed marriage. And so, and then just the last thing, William is complicated. I, I is complicated. When I did my episode on the RLDS church, I, uh, what I had mainly read were the claims of the RLDS church founders who said that William was a polygamist because he tried to get them to be, according to them. And someone was so angry at me in the comments for saying William was a polygamist. They, they were like, he was not. You can’t say. And I’m like, I can’t, I’m, I’m struggling with trying to make the case of Joseph. I can’t step into William, but there is important, like William gave us some important testimonies about Joseph’s innocence. And like you said, he never, for whatever his complicated story may be, even in his day, he was a I like how you handle him in the book. Where you say William was kind of that kid, like the problem child, because I know that. He has a hard time getting along with everyone. He and Joseph fight. He had like, you know, I like how you cover that story. So William, you know, we, none of us know exactly what to do with him. But like you said, even he never testified that Joseph or Hirum were polygamists, right? And so, and it was, it was Brigham that convinced him. So is there anything else like on your mind that would, would be important in the discussion that we’ve left off about Hirum? I’m sure there are a million things, but

[2:11:40] Whitney Horning: There are, I think I would just like to encourage anyone who’s listening to this. 2 Re doctrine and Covenants 124, specifically the verses about Hirum. And ask yourself if there were promises given to Aron, and one of those promises was that we would honorably remember him. How we can do that and how you as a, as somebody who is striving to follow God, to please God, to be a greater follower of righteousness, can fulfill that promise that God gave to Him because While the LDS Church does have a few nice things to say about him, they’ve done to him the same thing, even if only on a small scale. They have assigned him as a polygamist, um, they have Minimize who he was in God’s great work of the restoration and in God’s family and in his kingdom. And so I would just encourage you to ask yourself how and why, why is it important? Why would God want us to honorably remember Hirum? If this is a a world where, you know, I hear a lot of people say the only thing that matters is Jesus Christ. And the only thing that matters is my relationship with him. Yeah, he sends us. Men And their wives who um Who who receive covenants and promises from the Lord and are there to be a pattern for us to follow and to and to um pattern our own lives after, and they don’t replace the Lord. We are still supposed to strive to seek the Lord and to have a personal and a profound relationship with Him. But part of that is a responsibility to acknowledge those servants that he does send to us. And if those men and their wives can teach us something, if they can teach us about marriage, teach us about families, if they can teach us about the nature and character of God, then those are people that we should be studying and should be um acknowledging as people who attain to a level. Of discipleship that we should all be striving to emulate.

[2:14:14] Michelle: Excellent. That’s beautiful. They, yeah, they don’t replace the savior. They’re signposts pointing to

[2:14:19] Whitney Horning: right? I like my husband and I like to talk about. If we were to hike, you know, Mount Everest, we would train and practice, but when we get there, we wouldn’t just go off on our own and go, you know, it’s at the top of the mountain. We would hire the best and most well trained Sherpa who can safely guide us to the top of the mountain. And so just like Lehi’s dream, Lehi partakes of the fruit, he makes it there. He partakes of the fruit of the tree of life, which is the savior, and then he turns and calls for others, and those who hear his voice and follow it are safely guided to the tree where then they partake. So you’re exactly right, they, they don’t replace. They are simply there to guide us and to help us on our journey to get there.

[2:15:15] Michelle: Oh, I like that. I and I like your, um, model of Mount Everest because the fact is you can see the peak, right? You’re not following someone in circles around the mountain, as Isaiah said, plowing and never planting, right? Go through winding paths. You, you. It’s someone who is where you want to go or who has been where you want to go and helping you follow. That’s what

[2:15:39] Whitney Horning: there is there is so that there there’s that, but there is something to if you read throughout the scriptures beginning with Adam. These men are given promises, and when Malachi says the spirit of Elijah will turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, it’s those men. It’s the men who gained the title Father. And have been given promises and we need to fulfill those promises that the Lord’s given them. So, you know, it’s this whole circle of patriarchal structure, and we’re this the symbioticness of the, the circle of life that we Like when Joseph said, you know, we need to redeem our dead, well, we do that by remembering these people and so there’s all there’s so much in there, but if I, I think if you are someone who is striving to get closer to the savior. You’re not, you’re, you’re going to be able to do it. Better and um maybe maybe he will be more apt to um acknowledge those who acknowledge the gifts he sent us, and he sent us thousands and thousands of words through his prophets that we have in scripture. And so, acknowledging like that that’s exactly Hirum’s pattern. Joseph followed Joseph is the pattern of someone after generations of apostasy, reconnecting with the Lord and restoring. Hirum is the pattern of someone acknowledging that profit that has been sent and accepting and heeding his message until he gets it for himself.

[2:17:30] Michelle: OK, that’s, I love that. That’s great. So we can follow those same paths.

[2:17:35] Whitney Horning: That’s exactly, exactly. That’s that’s what the promise is that we can DNC 931. I mean, the Lord fulfills his promises, but it is dependent on us doing what we need to do.

[2:17:50] Michelle: I love that and again redeeming their names. I find it tragic that Hiram’s own children were put in this situation to be convinced. Like I think Joseph F. Smith as this young, vulnerable, parentless, you know. Youth adopted in by Hebrew and Brigham, sort of, at least in their ideology. You know, it’s really like, like, I have a lot of sympathy for Joseph F seeing what he, who he became because of how his experiences as well. But I like to think that he learned the truth about his father, right, and his uncle. And I think that it’s important for us to do the same. And and to truly look honestly at his life, his own words, his own records, his own posterity, just like we’re doing with Joseph, because just like in life, Hirum was a second witness of Joseph. Right? In death, regarding their goodness and their honor as husbands and this question of polygamy, Hirum again is a second witness of Joseph. We can use Hiram’s life and Hiram’s words to also testify of the innocence of himself and of Joseph in this regard. I think it’s important. I’m really glad you, you thought of delving into Hiram’s life because it’s a, it’s an essential part of this discussion. So Whitney, thank you so much for Your expertise are amazing. I hope everyone is as impressed as I am. I didn’t give her a list of questions. She just has this all on the top of her head. It is amazing to me. So I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and all that you have given us. So, oh, Whitney wrote a special paper in preparation for our, our discussion. Is it OK with you if I attach that for people to read?

[2:19:33] Whitney Horning: Yeah. So I will, I just need to do a few little grammar edits and then I’ll send you a copy. OK.

[2:19:39] Michelle: OK. And I, I’m sorry to put you on the spot, but yeah, you’ll have Whitney’s kind of short version. Then I really recommend her full book, both of her books, and all of the documents that we’ve discussed. I’ll also include those in the discussion so people can follow up and see the, do, do the research for themselves. So have a wonderful night

[2:19:58] Whitney Horning: and thank you again. Thank you for all the work you’re doing.

[2:20:03] Michelle: Wow, right? Another giant thank you to Whitney for all of her incredible work. And again, please read the paper that she wrote about Hiram. Look for her book, both, both of her books are so valuable. Thank you, Whitney, for taking the time. To come and talk to me and thank you all for joining with me and sticking along on these this these important discussions. The next um episodes I have coming up are also just so important. I have incredible guests. There is so much to learn. I feel like It’s kind of one of those things that the more you study, the more you realize there is to learn, you know, I wondered how much there was to talk about with polygamy, but there’s a lot and there’s always more, and it gets more and more important and more and more fascinating. So I’m really excited that you are sticking with this, uh, this, um, podcast, and I hope you are looking forward to the future episodes. Thank you so much and I will see you next time.