Everything to do with Joseph Smith’s polygamy hinges on William Clayton and his journals. Many people argue that Clayton’s journals should be accepted without question — but they haven’t seen this.
Jeremy Hoop takes us through an extremely in depth look at everything we know about William Clayton’s process of record keeping — and editing. He clearly demonstrates how we can easily tell the difference between an original draft book and a finalized clean copy, and shows in no uncertain terms (through extensive visual evidence) which category Clayton’s journals fall into.
This is a very long discussion, which some will find fascinating, and others will find overwhelming. For those who prefer the more condensed version, Jeremy will return in the near future to present a much shorter version of the same presentation and evidence, so you won’t completely miss out.
Please consider supporting this podcast:
Links:
William Clayton’s Writings, Fillerup compilation
Joseph Smith’s Try the Spirits from Times and Seasons
Transcript:
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. And now the historical case for Joseph Smith’s supposed polygamy. OK. This is the long awaited second part of the discussion on William Clayton with Jeremy Ho. Now I have to give a little bit of preliminary information as you, I’m sure have already seen. This is a very long episode. Um Jeremy brought a ton of information, some of you might find this a little bit too in depth and which is just fine. Some of you I know will just love everything that is shared. So to try to um reach the entire audience with this incredibly important information, Jeremy is working on getting this presentation down to about 60 to 90 minutes and we are going to rerecord a second version. So for those who want the entire um three hour and 45 minute discussion, you are in luck here it is for those who feel like this might be a little bit much. I mean, of course, I think there’s a ton of valuable information here, but Jeremy is going to go through and and really choose the most important and get it down to what might be a more manageable size for some of you. So if anyone would rather wait, that will be forthcoming. So you will get the information. In either case, I think this is an incredibly important topic and episode, either this one or the one that is coming because in my opinion, Jeremy has just proved that William Clayton’s journal cannot be said to be contemporary. Yes, I know, proved is a hard um word. So maybe I should soften that. But I think that someone would have a very difficult time arguing that William Clayton’s journal is contemporaneous after watching this episode and this presentation that he has put together. So I’m so excited that you are here. Buckle up and join us for this incredible deep dive into the journals of William Clayton. Welcome to this long anticipated episode of 100 32 problems long anticipated by Jeremy and me as much as anybody else. I have to tell everyone this is our third time count. Then three, we’ve probably spent already four hours on this episode trying to get it ready. And so now we’ve got the technology set up, everything should go smoothly, but this is a guy that for my viewers needs no introduction and Jeremy I and my audience cannot thank you enough for your long suffering, enduring to the end your patience to get this information out there because it is so important and I’m so excited to hear it again myself and bring it to my audience. So welcome and thank you in advance for all of this.
[03:03] Jeremy Hoop: Thanks for having me again. Um Yeah, this is worth it. I think this, this material is um is really important and uh it’s, well, it’s really geeky stuff. Uh If you’re not in the mood to, to listen to something that gets deep into the tall grass, in fact, goes burrows well beneath the roots of the tallgrass. Um You might wanna save this for another day, although don’t save it, just dive in, but it’s, we’re gonna get kind of document nerdy here today. So,
[03:36] Michelle: but of all the things I thought I’d geek out about in my life, I didn’t know William Clayton was high on the list, but the more you study this, the more important you realize it is like we have got to study this guy inside out because he’s so central to all of this. It’s insane. So it’s insane how important this like sad little man turns out to be in this research. So, yeah, we can go ahead and dive right in. Ok.
[04:05] Jeremy Hoop: I’m excited to um to explore this further. Um uh If, if people are just joining this, this particular topic, William Clayton for the first time and you haven’t seeing the other pieces that are foundational. We uh Michelle and I went through um things about Brigham Young and Heber Kimball and the things that they were doing whilst in England, the things that they believed in and were practicing at least uh document is that a word document with uh Heber Kimball, um that’s gonna become part of the lexicon. Uh Heber Kimball was absolutely practicing some form of spiritual wifey. Um some form of plurality of wives um in England and Brigham Young at least believed in it and there is some evidence uh later tales of him actually practicing it. Uh uh Well, adultery of some kind or some kind of loose behavior. We’ve been having technical difficulties from episode to episode to episode. We’ve even had one in this episode and I think there’s some little demon that does not want this information out. So
[05:16] Michelle: do you know what it’s the, it’s Little Willie, we’ll call him Little Willie.
[05:22] Jeremy Hoop: Willie. Little Willie is a mischievous um disembodied spirit. Oh, we’re going to dissect to dissect Little Willie um Today in great detail parts of Little Willie. Um and what we’re going to focus on today, I think will help people have much greater context to understand this particular piece of the puzzle related to Joseph Smith and polygamy. Um If you could share my screen, that would be great. Let’s dive in. So we have been talking about um characters from, from the restoration history that are have been less than truthful, truthful, proven to have uh fabricated stories and to have embellished and to have changed history. So we started off talking about Brigham and Heber and the things that they were doing prior to Joseph Smith, supposedly ever saying a word to them about the principle that they came to um love and adore and practice and, and that they integrated as what they considered to be the fullness of the gospel, the, the highest principle in the gospel. Brigham and Hebert. Long story short, we’re doing these things in England long before Joseph ever supposedly says anything. Well, moving on, we’re now talking about William Clayton. William Clayton is a central figure in all of this, primarily uh because of his journal. And in episode one, we talked about aspects of his journals, his England journal and his Nauvoo journal that revealed a lot about his character. Today, we’re gonna talk about the journal itself. We’re going to dive into the context of the journal. So people have an understanding of what they’re reading if they read parts of it and why it is that um that people consider it to be the smoking gun for Joseph Smith’s polygamy and why they shouldn’t. Frankly, in part three, we’re gonna going to examine aspects of the content of that journal. And then in part four, we’re going to talk about consistency, the consistency of the story of the revelation from uh uh to Joseph about plural marriage. And Clayton is at the center of that. And so today, we’re talking about context and we’re gonna ask the question is Clayton’s Journal Contemporaneous and secondarily is Clayton credible. So as
[08:06] Michelle: to compliment you on all of your alliteration, I’m very much enjoying it. This is very well done for Clayton
[08:12] Jeremy Hoop: Elder Maxwell would be proud, he
[08:15] Michelle: would be proud
[08:17] Jeremy Hoop: one of my favorites. Um As we talk about the journal, we’re gonna, we’re going to talk about what is publicly available. And also we’re going to examine what has not been publicly available. But when we refer to the journal that has heretofore been referenced most famously, it’s in this book that you see on your screen, an intimate chronicle that was compiled by uh George D Smith back in the mid nineties, I believe 1995 I think. And as I said, we’re going to dive into the context of this so we can understand it better. The importance of this record to the Joseph Smith polygamy narrative cannot be overstated. His journal is the singular piece. The only piece of alleged contemporaneous what could actually be called evidence. If it’s credible without his novo journal, all we have are uncorroborated accusations, decades old hearsay, wild speculation, loose correlation without causation. That’s all that there is. I’ve I heard Don Bradley, a Mormon historian say that there are 30 pieces of contemporaneous evidence. II, I beg to differ. Those are not evidence is what he will claim things like the happiness letter or things like the Sarah and Whitney letter or things like the, the affidavits and the expositor. Ok. Those things are not evidence, those things. Actually,
[09:44] Michelle: I want to say, I’m actually excited to talk to Don a brat about that because he’s going to come on and talk to me about
[09:49] Jeremy Hoop: to be able
[09:49] Michelle: to hear, um, you know, to be able to discuss that a little further. So, yeah, we’ll be able to dig in. Hopefully, I agree with you.
[09:56] Jeremy Hoop: By the way I have from everything I’ve seen of Don Bradley, he seems to be really a wonderful guy and probably one of the best thinkers on this subject that I’ve encountered on the other side, the most fair minded, um especially as I just heard him blow up the whole Louisa Beaman narrative. Maybe we need to talk about that sometime. But um the historians, the commentators, uh they have not examined the things we’re gonna talk about today. I have not heard a single person address what we’re going to address today, but rather they have made unfounded claims about the contemporaneous nature of the journal. They trust them implicitly. They, they speak of these journals as though they are. It is a foregone conclusion that they are contemporaneous and we will show today that the journal cannot be said to be contemporaneous with any certainty. And the strongest likelihood is that they, because there are three of them, there are three, if you wanna call them volumes, they were written after the events and thus the credibility of the journals, they must come into question. Also given what Clayton reveals about himself in these journals, the major inconsistencies, um the constant accusations against him, uh serious character flaws that are revealed in the journals be by the way, being an outsider, an outsider to the inner circle of uh Mormon hierarchy. It’s always assumed that he’s an insider, he’s actually not and we’re gonna discover a portion of that today. Yeah,
[11:31] Michelle: he’s, he’s the OG Mormon wannabe, right? He really is like William, the wannabe. Clayton is kind of how I refer to him in my mind because that’s an important part to understand about him.
[11:41] Jeremy Hoop: And I, and I, and other than James Allen who only lets it kind of briefly leak out. I’ve never heard anyone address this part of his character and I don’t know why exactly. I suspect it’s because there’s a need to have him be part of the team. Um He, he’s a very interesting character and, and he’s, he’s kind of a loner, he’s kind of on his own. Um And given all this, given all of these things, we should seriously question the veracity of his story. And without his story and knowing what we know about Brigham and Heber believing in and practicing spiritual wifey in England. I know that by the way, there’s people out there who are, maybe you’re hearing this for the first time. You’re saying it wasn’t called spiritual wifey. It was called spiritual wifey. We have many testimonies,
[12:33] Michelle: quotes of Brigham Young himself, calling it spiritual wifey that I’ve compiled. So it doesn’t work.
[12:41] Jeremy Hoop: So, so those of you like Brian Hales who say there was a difference between spiritual wifey and plurality of wives or celestial, plural marriage or polygamy according to their own statements according to Helen Mar Kimball, according to Emily Partridge, according to Brigham Young himself, it was called spiritual wifey in those days. So when I say they were practicing spiritual wifey in England, that’s what they were doing. And they were doing this while when they met William and baptized him in England because of these things, we must re examine and question all of the accusations and decades old hearsay. And finally, we need to exonerate Joseph. So, uh first, I think it’s really helpful to ask ourselves what would be admissible in a court of law and perhaps that can better help us understand these journals. I asked a really
[13:33] Michelle: quickly, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just really want to quickly respond to what you said about. We need to exonerate Joseph because I think that a common misunderstanding is that people think that we are acting under motivated reasoning, that we have the foregone conclusion that Joseph was innocent and that we because of that are looking for the information. And I just wanted to clarify because I know that this is the case with both you and me that it’s the opposite. We saw this and said, the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that we’ve got the wrong guy. And when you come to that conclusion, then you want to exonerate the right guy and make sure that we have the right guy accused. So I just wanted to clarify that because I want to head off any of those accusations and misunderstandings. I think if people will look at this information fairly as you and I have done, they will very likely come up with the same conclusions we have. And when you see that you want to exonerate the guy that’s been falsely accused.
[14:29] Jeremy Hoop: So incredibly important point. Uh If you ha if this is the first time you’re hearing me speak or hearing Michelle speak, I, I’ll say again, I used to believe that he was, I used to teach people that he was, I used to think it was a celestial principle. It was only until I examined things closely that my, my belief in this and, and my um my understanding of Joseph himself changed entirely. It’s in read, it’s in studying him, it’s in reading his words, it’s in reading the revelations, it’s in understanding um his interactions between people. They’re not consistent with the tale that’s told of him later. They’re certainly not consistent with Brigham Young. And so when a as I’ve come to know Joseph Smith, it, it has nothing to do with. I, I need him to be a polygamist I, I guess I could have needed him to be a polygamist before in order to maintain my current paradigm. Um It was, it is much more, it’s, it’s much more difficult to go against consensus, to go against power structures, to go against the, the high and mighty and the noble uh academics and historians and commentators who, who garner so much attention. Look, we’re a little fringe movement out here, um, growing but a fringe movement growing pretty rapidly. Um But we certainly don’t have, there’s not a lot of uh of notoriety and fame and fortune in this for us. And so the only thing I care about and you can judge this statement on its, on its merits. Um I care about what’s true. And so far, what I have found, I’m open to him being a polygamist. If you’ll show me some evidence so far, what I found is the opposite. And so when we’re talking about evidence, uh I asked a lawyer friend of mine, hey, could you help me explain the rules of evidence, what’s admissible in a court of law? Um And he sent me over the code and basically a journal would be admissible in a court of law if um it was made at or near the time uh of the event and someone by someone who had knowledge of the event, um if it was conducted in a regular course of activity and a journal would be that if it’s actually done as a daily record. And also if the opponent does not show that the source of information or the method of circumstance of preparation indicate a lack of trustworthiness. Ok. So we have to find the person who prepares it credible. And we also have to find that the, the the mode of creating it was credible. I think Michelle you and I talked about how sometimes in divorce court, you know, journals are fabricated in order for one spouse to implicate the other in things they didn’t do. And so uh admitting a journal in a court of law, it’s pretty tricky. Um And so,
[17:29] Michelle: and part of that last piece is also the motivation if like, like, so you’re hitting, I mean, I mean, is there like I, I did use the example of a, an an unhappy spouse starting to create a journal just to use as evidence and it’s somewhat clear when that happens, right? So what I find interesting is that all, all of those points that you um brought up about the credibility of a journal, all four of them are in serious problem with Clayton. I’m assuming you’re gonna go into it, but it’s kind of fun to get to see a absolutely check, check, check, check, inadmissible, throw it out. OK.
[18:06] Jeremy Hoop: So just to clarify chat G BT helps us to understand just a little bit more the party offering the journal. Um also needs to prove that it’s genuine, that the burden of proof really is on them to say this is a genuine record. The church has not released these journals. Ok. We’ll talk about that a little bit more. Uh general generally, journals are considered hearsay. And so oftentimes they’re not even admissible but, but if they’re extremely relevant to the subject matter, um and, and they are considered contemporaneous if they can be established as contemporaneous, they, that hearsay rule can be overcome and then the credibility of the journal itself and the person who created it can impact its weight as evidence. If the journal is inconsistent, contradicts other evidence or seems manipulated, its credibility might be questioned. So just keep those in the back of your mind as we go through this historians, they don’t use legal standards. I I get that you don’t construct history based on legal standards in terms of considering evidence there, it’s a, it’s a different rule of thumb. However, when we’re stating something definitively that we know happened, ok. Um Then we might consider using a little bit higher standard for the things that we call evidence. Unfortunately, sometimes historians, they will speak with extraordinary certainty. When the available evidence, it requires them, it demands them to speak with more humility and circumspection.
[19:39] Michelle: Absolutely. Oh, can you go back to that slide and just let me do one little exercise. Do you guys remember this from Sesame Street? One of these things is not like the other one of these things just doesn’t belong. And I wanna know if you know what I’m referring to because you have a panel of historians with the non historian who is an amateur historian who calls out every other amateur historian. Right. And I just of knowledge that one of those things does not belong, which is the non historian that is doing history and, and using our non historian status to come after us. The irony and hypocrisy of that is just so rich. So I couldn’t let that slide pass without.
[20:22] Jeremy Hoop: And that’s, that’s Brian Hales who’s a, an anesthesiologist and by, you know, by occupation, I think he’s retired. Um That’s not to minimize his work. His work has been extensive and, and in some ways, extremely helpful to this entire discussion. Um frankly, because it’s pointed out, I think the weakness is in the argument. Um Now James Allen, the primary biographer, the, the, the, the principal biographer for William Clayton, um he admits his own bias and he says the following which I really appreciate that he gives us a window into how he approached um his work on William Clayton, no historian is totally free from bias. And at this point, I should recognize my own as I studied Clayton’s life, I saw success and failure, strength and weakness, inspiration, and stumbling blocks. But out of all of it came a genuine respect for the man that had an obvious effect on what I’ve written. At the same time, I’ve tried not to forget the warning implied in a comment made by a friend who criticized an early draft of one chapter in which I rationalized with great empathy. Some of Clayton’s problems, quote Williams frailties make him lovable. My critic wrote but not worship. I hope I have adjusted the manuscript so that what comes out is respect without idolatry and a sympathetic presentation of important issues without historic historical distortion, interesting that he might even catch himself in somewhat idolizing William Clayton. Let me also take the liberty of expressing a personal concern that in part arises from my being both a believing latter day saint and a professional historian. The quest of the historian is not only for the facts but also for a sense of balance. As one attempts to recreate the past in the process, at least two troublesome temptations must be avoided, both of which can affect historians of religion all too easily. One is to erase from history, everything but that which is pleasing or non controversial. And the other is to emphasize the sensational, the bizarre and the negative because of their likely appeal to certain readers. Both tendencies tend to distort and neither will ever provide the steady balance. So essential to historical understanding, I have tried to do neither our heritage to paraphrase Paul is made up of many parts that when fitly framed together should provide us all with a better perspective on what the past was all about. OK. So the, the, the, the, the interesting thing is what he’s, what, what is leaking out here is what I think affects every one of the historians as well as every one of the commentators. When it comes to William Clayton, they love the things he’s written because of the story. It’s able to help them tell. And for whatever reason, this story is so important to them, they will not give the story up. They, they will hold and you will notice this if you’re watching this and just compare what we’re gonna talk about in the detail with which we will examine this and ask yourself if anyone will give this kind of attention to this material. And my supposition is they won’t, they’ll ignore it. Um Or they’ll just try to talk it away as a, as a strange conspiracy theory by really, really, um mentally deranged people. That’s my guess.
[23:41] Michelle: You go ahead and then I want to share two things, but you, you finish your thought,
[23:44] Jeremy Hoop: they need this story by William Clayton to be true. And for whatever reason, James Allen is able to overlook a lot um to the point where he almost idolizes William Clayton. He and he’s had to in his revisions um uh uh edit his, his telling of the story to give it quote more balance. And so I think we ought to just look at what is the, what is the truth as far as we can ascertain it and, and let go of our, of our need for something to support our argument. I know people accuse us of that, but uh you can judge for yourself whether the information we provide today is, is straight shooting or not.
[24:27] Michelle: So I wanna just back up what you were saying with two specific examples that I have because I know we talked about historians having a different standard, but I’m not confident that it’s a better standard because I just did that small piece on the William Law Diary. I’m quoted a historian that basically said I chose to utilize it heavily because William Law’s voice is so important and, and the fact that it was almost certainly a forgery, very likely a Mark Hoffman forgery, very possibly a Mark Hoffman forgery doesn’t matter as much as I want what it says for my story. And I was reported in another conversation where D Michael Quinn and you could double check this, admitted to knowingly using, using a known Hoffman forgery in his book, The Origins, uh whatever it’s his origins book. And he did that. And when he was asked about it, he just said because it sounded like what Joseph would say and it’s it, I we, we need the voice of, we need the sources of Joseph Smith. They basically want it so much that they lose the ability to, to question it. And that is a huge problem when they are given this, this elevated platform of authority that I think they should need to earn better than
[25:41] Jeremy Hoop: they do. There are those out there, there are some prominent historians out there right now. I won’t call them out. But they, they, they are so I, I don’t know what their, what their spiritual or religious sensibilities are. My sense is they’re either agnostic or atheist and, and, and they, in their mind, it’s just an impossibility that there could be anything divine. And so there has to be a fraudulent bent to the story. And so their perspective is everything is fraudulent. Everything Joseph Smith does is uh has to be explained by some kind of story of a con man. E every part of it can be explained by, by a man who’s either mentally deranged. He’s got some kind of personality s uh some he’s on the um the, the uh narcissistic Personality disorder scale or um or he’s got some mental illness or something of that nature. Plus he’s also nefarious and he’s, and he’s always doing things that are self serving. Look in, in this work. Part of this won’t be examined today, but part of what is absolutely important to examine are, are the things he says and does that he says and does not what other people said that he said and did you can find a mountain of stuff that people said while he was alive in the exposes that were written that are just pure hogwash that they find no basis in reality. And, and when you, and by the way, many of these historians will find credibility in those statements without anchoring them to something real. Something that
[27:12] Michelle: many of those statements are by folks like Joseph Jackson or John Bennett who, who even in their own day were known, you know, like, like the worst of newspapers, right? The newspapers started out saying this eminent wonderful laudable person just because they were going after Joseph Smith. And within just a little while they have to say, ok, we know this guy has problems, but here’s what he’s saying. And yet our own historians, LDS, historians even not even just the skeptics use those people as unquestioned authorities and automatically accept everything they say. So everything Joseph Smith said was a lie, even from LDS. Historians and everything these despicable figures said, they were known as despicable figures universally in their own day, everything they said is true. I can’t not make sense of that for the life of
[27:59] Jeremy Hoop: they, they John Hayek made a comment once he’s a document expert. He um he made a comment that the, the, the he called them, the New Mormon historians give equal weight to all evidence. That’s actually not quite true. They, they give, they give weight to whatever evidence they want to give weight to and, and they don’t actually assess the evidence based on its actual, um uh, veracity based on, based on whether it ought to be considered credible or not. They, they, they simply, there’s a statement over here by Martin Harris. Therefore, it must be true because I want it to be true because it rings true as Michael Quinn said, you know, God rest his soul. And so, um, I think we ought to have a different standard than what is being practiced ubiquitously by the, uh, especially the Mormon historians. I, I have a real issue with the Mormon historians because I frankly, I call it uh his historical malpractice because they, they will never do what we are doing here. And, and I challenge
[29:03] Michelle: that’s why, that’s why what we are doing is so important. If no one is there to keep them honest, they don’t have to be honest. So even those who disagree with us or think we’re ridiculous, at least acknowledge that we are doing a great work to force historians to be more honest. Eventually they’re going to have to grapple with these. There’s a
[29:21] Jeremy Hoop: new biography coming up by Richard Turley church historian and uh going to be the definitive biography on Joseph Smith. And undoubtedly it will repeat the same nonsense. It’s in the book Saints and that’s in the Joseph Smith papers,
[29:34] Michelle: which amounts to gaslighting honestly, for those of us who have done the work and studied it, I always feel gas lit when they are so dishonest. You know,
[29:44] Jeremy Hoop: when they tell the story and they talk about it. Those of you watching ask yourself, when do they say the following? Brigham Young in 1867 said that Joseph in 1843 did, when did they say that Emily Partridge in 1892 said under oath in a court case, such and such and it contradicted with what she said in 1877. And also what she wrote in 1884. When did they do that? When do they give you the full context of what they’re quoting what they don’t do? Is that, that what they say is Joseph Smith in 1842 did such and such or in 1841 he was sealed to Louisa Beaman. They don’t tell you where they get the information and what it leaves is an extraordinarily misleading impression that it was a, that, that it, that it’s accepted that that just happened. And as we just made reference to Don Bradley has overthrown, the notion that Louisa Beaman was the first quote, plural wife. What else can be overthrown if you actually examine what’s going on? Well, we’re going to start that with William Clayton. So let’s get back to that narrative. So now we only have scant excerpts from what are the Clayton journals um from one historian’s notes that historian being Andy E Hat, the historians have unquestionably trusted these experts, these excerpts. Um and they have uh they just make wild assumptions about the credibility of the journals. Now, as I’ve mentioned, the actual journals themselves have not ever been released to the public, which is odd in a legal sense, if, if you were to claim in a court of law, I have evidence of something happening, a crime being committed or, or something occurring. Um And you don’t produce that evidence, but you make a statement about it, you simply claim the evidence exists, but then you fail to produce it that creates something called adverse inference. It’s a legal term that basically says this an adverse inference is generally, um is a legal inference adverse to the concerned party made from a party’s silence or the absence of requested evidence. For example, as a sanction of spoliation of evidence, a court may instruct the jury, it could draw an inference that the evidence contained in the destroyed documents or the unproduced documents would have been unfavorable. Let me translate. If you don’t produce the evidence, the judge can say to the jury, you can basically infer the opposite of what they’re saying or that it works against them, that their argument works against them because they’re, they refuse to produce that evidence. So it’s a strict warning aga against calling something evidence without being able to back it up. Now, why is it to
[32:33] Michelle: its most basic level? It’s basically the dog ate my homework. That’s basically exactly what it amounts to, right? I have no, I promise, I promise. I did it all. But the dog, that’s exactly what we have happening here. So I just wanted to really make that simple. Every this is obvious. It’s like just logically basic for everyone to understand this.
[32:55] Jeremy Hoop: So why is it taking so long? We have no idea that the church said in 2017 that they would release the journals. Um Just recently, they said they’re there, it’s still years away, but they’re still working on it. I don’t know, we can only speculate. Um So now all we can do is examine what we have available to us. Now, let’s take a closer look at the clever clerk in his work of creating these the context of these journals. So Allen says this in 1842 William Clayton, this is James Allen in his biography, becoming involved in nearly every important activity in NAVOO, including the private concerns of the prophet as a scribe. He kept the sacred book of the Law of the Lord was officially designated to write the history of the nut temple, helped prepare prepare the official history of Joseph Smith. Indeed, his personal journals became the source for many entries in that history and kept various other books and accounts as assigned, he was a member of the Temple committee and kept all the financial and other records dealing with the building of the temple, including the collection and recording of tithes. Later after the baptismal font was completed, it was up to Clayton to issue receipts, certifying that a person was entitled to the privileges of the font for baptisms for the dead because he had paid because he the person had paid tithing. He became navoo city treasurer, recorder, and clerk of the NAVOO city council secretary pro TEM of the NAVOO Masonic Lodge, an officer in the NAVOO Music Association and a member of the committee responsible for erecting the music hall in Navoo. He also became a member and clerk of the highly important council of 50 as well as a member of Joseph Smith’s private prayer circle. So he went from text uh textile clerk to the clerk of the Kingdom. In a pretty short period of time, his work began on the 10th of February 1842 in his Manchester Journal. He writes brother Kimball came in the morning to say that I must go to Joseph Smith’s office and assist Brother Richards. I accordingly got re accordingly, got ready and went to the office and commenced entering tithing for the temple. I was still shaking with eu every day. I hope I pronounce that right? Eu every day, but I did it. I did not much, it did not much disable me for work.
[35:05] Michelle: Can I, can I back up and ask a question about your last slide where you kind of showed the, the, the one right before that the pre eminent rise of William Clayton. Is that like have you sourced? That is that all based on William Clayton’s own journals? His like, was he a member of Joseph’s Prayers work or
[35:22] Jeremy Hoop: is that well? Ok. That’s a, uh I, I’ve, I’ve been discussing with Whitney Horning frankly. Um the references in the Wilfred Woodruff Journal, whether or not that’s actually a contemporaneous record or not. I know people freak out about saying that, but I think there’s some evidence that that also might be a reminiscence rather than a, than a, than a day to day record. Um There is reference in Clayton’s journal where he’s finally accepted to what some call the quorum. OK. What, what um what is mentioned as the quorum in, in Richard’s uh recording. I call it Richard’s memo book, but the historians call it Joseph’s journal. It’s not really a journal, it’s a memo book, it’s a draft. OK. But in Richard’s memo book, um he, he calls it the quorum, the, the group which included, by the way, William Law and William Marks and others. Um they met in the red brick store, they met for prayer meetings with Joseph Smith. He gave instruction. This is where he gave something of some kind of ceremony that we don’t have any record of other than what people tell about it. Um And Willard Richards documents, some of this actually a good deal of it in his journal. Um in those references we have and in Clayton’s journal, he mentions when he was accepted to that quote quorum and by the way, it was late, it was in the beginning of 1844 you would think that this kid would be, would have been swept up and taken under Joseph’s wing, right when he got off the boat or shortly after beginning to work in the temple office. But he didn’t, it took quite a bit of time and I think we’re going to see why, as we get to know William a little bit better. OK.
[37:03] Michelle: That’s, that’s why I’m asking because I’m Harry, for example, James Whitehead’s version of who William Clayton was and how in the inner circles he was versus William Clayton’s claims of being all alone with Joseph and Hyrum for the most important revelation because the three of them were best buds that hung out with nobody else. That, that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m wanting to
[37:24] Jeremy Hoop: us to sort through in the next episode. We’ll actually, we’re, we’re going to read James Whitehead extensively and what he says about William Clayton. So we can get a AAA sense of another narrative and see, see how that fits. But yes, the all of these things you see that Alan mentions are absolutely documented. He, he, he was extraordinarily active in the um in, in recording parts of, of Mormon uh whether it as a clerk um or, or as a uh well, I always as a clerk but recording minutes of meetings um making transcripts of uh of sermons, Joseph gave recording tithing receipts, doing land transactions, creating deeds. Um That was his, that was his occupation. He was a trained clerk from, from Manchester England. He worked in a textile factory um back in the uh 18, late 18 thirties, I believe. Um and, and then quit his job and, and became the second counselor in the mission presidency. Um after he was baptized, they, they would rise people to the ranks of leadership uh in some cases very quickly. Um And, and, and he went from there and he worked extensively with Heber Kimball and Willard Richards whilst in England, which is why he was asked to do these things um in um in NAVOO because they had experience with him and Heber um had the era of Joseph Smith.
[38:47] Michelle: OK. So, so as far as being in Joseph’s prayer circle that’s valid too, from other sources um or is that just from Clayton?
[38:56] Jeremy Hoop: So, and the, the source that I have says that the 12 voted to admit him. Ok. Now, so what I can’t, what I can’t tell is whether or not uh Joseph Smith was involved in that decision or not. I don’t know. Um And I think there’s a lot of things that are assumed by the term quorum because they overlay the narrative of polygamy on top of the, the red brick store meetings and they make them all one thing and they, and they, it doesn’t quite work that way. There’s, there’s a lot of anomalies, a lot of things to, to pull apart about whatever was going on in the red brick store. A lot of things to understand about that, that, that aren’t as simple as this is where it all began. It began in the secret meetings above the red brick store where Joseph began to roll out the endowment and some of them, he, he inculcated into the practice of plural marriage. That is um uh it’s not that straightforward at all. And so, and, and we only have sparse evidence, only very sparse evidence of what Joseph was doing there. Ok.
[39:57] Michelle: So, yeah, so I’ll let you continue. I just wanted the, the, the reason I think this is an important question is because according to Clayton in his journal, Joseph is always just giving him an earful about Emma and he’s always like, like William Clayton knows everything that happens in Joseph’s private life because he’s the number one guy which interestingly, William Law then later does the same thing Emma always would complain to me about Joseph. It’s always, and so I wanna wanna know that
[40:21] Jeremy Hoop: story. That story starts with John Bennett. That story starts with John Bennett and chauncey Higby. One of the, one of the things that they would say to the women, this is for those of you who are not familiar with John Bennett. He was the first big scandalous person in Nauvoo in 1841 1842. Joseph was dealing with, with him for about a year and a half, trying to figure out how to, how to deal with this guy. Finally. Um, they just fellowship him. I don’t know if he’s ever formally excommunicated but he’s out. Um, uh, he, he’s, he’s kicked out of the Nabu Mason, uh, the, the Masonic Lodge and kicked out as mayor and, and the, and the, and the first presidency for getting the big scandal and it, and it causes Joseph to go public and to teach the release society and to publish things in the times and seasons. It’s a big, big deal. Well, in the, in the trials and the, the, the N Nu’s uh High Council ST high Council trials, um the women who testify against Chauncey Higby and John Bennett, one of the things they mentioned was they would say, what, why does Joseph, why does he speak against this stuff? Why, why does he keep it so private? Why doesn’t he talk about this? Because they would say Joseph told us we could do this. Joseph said we could go around and have free intercourse with you if you don’t tell anybody and some of them would say, and I’m gonna marry you, I’m gonna, you know, I promise to take care of you. Why doesn’t Joseph do this? Well, because it will cause him trouble in his own household. They would say the women would say. And so, so that story um was part of that narrative. Now, I don’t know if Brigham Young and Heber Kimball got it from them, but that was there at least. Ok. So we’re going to discover a portion of what, what I believe, um, a piece to this puzzle as to why William is writing these things. We’re gonna discover a piece of that today in the next episode. We’ll actually read the stuff that he writes about Joseph and Emma. For those of you who think we’re gonna skip over the scandal of stuff. We’re not, we’re gonna actually get into it. We’ll show you, um, you can read it yourself, by the way, just go Google it. It’s out there, but we’ll show you, we’ll talk about it, but I’ll link it below. One of the things that’s really, really important is to understand Clayton’s work is what I call a copyist. He began working with Heber Kimball in the 1818 40 43 45 47 doing copy work for Kimball. He was involved in copying the Nabu Mason minute books. He had a pattern of embellishing and leaving blank page pages for future editing. Um, he collaborated extensively with Willard Richards, which we’ll talk about. He was involved in copying the Council of 50 Minutes and then we’re gonna talk about the infamous nau journal. The reason we’re all here today in terms of his work with Heber Kimball and why this is relevant. Um There are many instances in his journal where he talks about working with, with Kimball in 1840. During this time, I preached occasionally on the Sabbath the first three or four days after I came home, I spent writing brother Kimball’s history which was lengthy tw 23rd, April 1843. Um Alan James Allen writes, Clayton also at times assisted other church leaders with their writing and helped Heber C. Kimball arrange his history. So he continued to do that into Nauvoo um in the Nut Temple history. Uh Clayton was invited to assist Heber C. Kimball in keeping a record of the Nauvoo Temple. Uh 18 8 April 1847 this morning, this is um Clayton writing in his pioneer journal. This morning, I wrote a letter for Heber to his wife Vate. I commenced writing Heber’s journal and wrote considerable. He wants me to write his journal all the journey I also wrote considerable in this book, meaning his own journal. 21st of April 1847 elder Kimball proposed tonight that I should leave a number of pages for so much of his journal as I’m behind in copying and start from the present and keep it up daily. He furnished me as candle and I wrote this uh the journal of this day’s travel by candlelight in his journal leaving 56 pages blank. Interesting question. Why in the world would Heber need to quote, rewrite his journal? OK. Now this is to prepare his history. This is, it has a purpose, but it’s interesting that he would turn over his journal to William Clayton to have him rewrite it, leave pages blank so they could go back in and edit things. But that was a pattern established in his work with Heber Kimball. He was also involved in copying the Nauvoo Mason minute books. Uh Interestingly enough, he took over for John Bennett. John Bennett was the clerk for the Masonic lodge in Nauvoo. Um and bra Brady Winslow um has an interesting um dial. I think it’s a dialogue article, irregularities in the work of the Nauvoo lodge where he helps us understand a pattern that Clayton engaged him. He says this when Clayton transferred the contents of minute book one that was recorded by John Bennett. OK. So he took the contents of minute book one um into Minute Book two. He resolved the issue by reserving several blank pages. So here we go again. We’re leaving blank pages for signatures before continuing his copy work. Why? So they could go back in and add stuff later when copying minutes from minute book one into Minute Book two. Clayton also made other changes to the record that cleaned up the manuscript in a few instances where Bennett deleted text in minute book one, whether because of mistakes or conscious revisions. Clayton omitted those deletions from minute book two. OK. So I’m gonna skip over this, but you get the idea. He’s starting to change small elements of the record. Uh Winslow says, as a scribe, go ahead.
[45:47] Michelle: Yeah, go, I’m just, I’m just seeing so so far we’re seeing this pattern of leaving blank pages to be able to rewrite things. And I want to make sure I’m catching what you’re, you know what you,
[45:57] Jeremy Hoop: he would copy things over from minute book one and then he would embellish and fill in gaps or create narrative or edit things in the minute book two. He didn’t do a straight copy and we uh Winslow says the following, as scribe for Nauvoo Lodge, Clayton felt authorized to make slight changes to the Lodge Lodge’s records as he saw it. This is evident in the way that he rephrased some of the things Bennett wrote in minute book one, while some of those modifications reflect a desire for minute entries to follow the same formulaic pattern, others served served to add clarification skipping over. He says though none of these changes significantly alter the meaning of the record, they nevertheless display the agency that Clayton felt he had as a scribe. Ok. In transferring minutes from minute book one to Minute Book two, I only bring this up to say he felt that he could just write things into the record that were not necessarily from the record to clarify or to give um meaning it was helpful. Ok. Now Winslow in this record doesn’t see anything that’s, that’s uh problematic and I assume there’s not, however this will play into what we’re going to discover.
[47:10] Michelle: Can I tell you what’s going through my mind right now? We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. I think it’s like when we talk about how things go through the hands of scribes and that’s potentially problematic. So it’s interesting to see that playing out right here with our own history
[47:26] Jeremy Hoop: and especially in the book of Mormon. Um actually sorry, I’m gonna get this wrong. The Doctrine and covenants, the wicked one cometh and taketh way, light and truth. By what, by disobedience and by the traditions of their fathers, which are not correct. How do we get our traditions wrong by the scribes by the people who write down the history who tell us this is what happened. And so this is really important to know how these people did this. Now, his collaboration with Richards is really important. Yes,
[47:53] Michelle: I just, I just have to say the connection between scribes and historians at this point in what you just described is pretty profound. Our traditions of our Yeah, and our record keepers, we don’t have scribes. Nowadays, we have the historians that give us the narrative. In other words, the traditions of our fathers. I, I think that’s pretty interesting to connect the potential. I I think it’s important to consider if that scripture can be connected to the narrative from historians instead of just the record of the
[48:22] Jeremy Hoop: scribes. We ha we have to have an accurate view of our history, not a, not a, a propagandized view, not an agenda driven view. And we, we ought to be brave enough to face that. So let’s take a look at Clayton and I
[48:37] Michelle: love how you say with humility because I don’t think what we need is a definitive authoritative. This is what happened. I think it’s so much better to say we have this source, we have this source. We have this source that people have access to the complexity and use their own discernment. That is so much more honest than thinking that you have to put forward a finalized narrative. That is not
[48:59] Jeremy Hoop: true. I have said this before. I’ll say it again. Don’t trust me. I know you don’t, I know, I know that people watching. Don’t, that’s a great, don’t trust me. Read the stuff yourself. Take a look at it yourself. You are smart enough to discern what is true. I I am done with experts, um academics, historians who claim we must go through them to understand the truth. We can read the same documents that they can. And, and for the first time in history, actually, we have a easy access to those same documents and so they cannot be the gatekeepers anymore and they’re not and you should not rely on them as the gatekeepers listen to them and take their opinion and see if it lines up with what you can read for yourself. One of those things is looking at Clayton and Richards and their work, the work that they did together the JSP, the Joseph Smith papers in an appendix um on how the Joseph Smith journals were created. They help us understand um what Richards was doing and what Clayton was doing with Richards. They say the following. By the way, they, they catalog four notes four, they call them draft notes that were used in the creation of the journals. They say the four short documents in this appendix appear to be notes, Willard Richards and William Clayton made of some of Joseph Smith’s activities in January, March, April and December 1842 and May 1844 respectively. Some of the information contained in these notes inscribed on loose sheets of paper is also featured in the Joseph Smith journal entries of the same dates though frequently in more detail and in more pool in a more polished form suggesting that the notes were inscribed first and that Richards later used the notes as source material for Joseph Smith’s journal. By the way, let me pause there. If you look at Joseph Smith’s journal, Joseph Smith’s journal is sparse. It’s a very strange record. So he’s taking very loose notes. The moving goes over into what we call the Joseph Smith journal. If you look at the Joseph Smith journal, this thing is more of a draft. It’s more of a draft for a history. It has very strange nota he’ll put, for example, uh on, on a page, it’ll be blank and all it will say is cold and balmy or stormy today. Now, why in the world would you put the date at the top and the notation of the weather at the bottom? If you were not using that as a, as, as color for a later telling of what happened on that day, based on other things that you’ve gathered, because you have all kinds of notes that you’ve been taking as we can see on the screen here, you have notes that you’re taking. When you’re at an event, you’re, you’re at a sermon, you’re writing your notes down in your, in, in, in, on loose pieces of paper or in a notebook or whatever. We don’t have most of that. You’re taking those notes and you’re putting them into another volume and we know from, from Willard Richards position. He was not Joseph’s personal secretary. He’s referred to that once, but he’s really the historian. Ok, that’s Willard Richards position. He’s the historian. And so he is documenting the history. I think Joseph trusted him in the beginning. I don’t think it was till the very end that Joseph did not trust him. And so he would follow Joseph around. Sometimes he’s writing things he’s not there for, but he’s gathering information, he’s putting them into this into this memo book into this draft. So this is referring to that effort. Does that make sense? Ok. That’s super
[52:27] Michelle: important. And I also do want to point out even the, even the Joseph Smith historians ad admit that this didn’t get carried around. This was a big book. Well,
[52:36] Jeremy Hoop: this one you see on your screen, this the book of the Law of the Lord, for sure, that that is more of a polished um record book that, that contained uh uh some revelations, uh letters, um daily activities of Joseph Smith. It’s not a journal at all. It’s more, it’s more of a history really um that contains really important events and um recordings uh related to the restoration related to Joseph Smith. Um So
[53:04] Michelle: referring to the Joseph Smith journal, we’re really dishonest calling these diaries or journals because we, we use that word so freely that it gives a mi of what they really
[53:16] Jeremy Hoop: are because it gives an impression that Willard Richards is, it gives the impression that Willard Richards is at his hip every day documenting everything he’s doing. And that was, that was simply not the case. We know of many instances where he’s not there and writing on things he’s not there for, he’s gathering information from other places. So the these notes that you see on your screen are therefore critical to understand the process by which Richards created Joseph Smith’s NOVO journals. And also they help us understand Clayton’s process as Well, the documents reproduced here are the only extent notes of Joseph Smith’s uh about Joseph Smith kept by Richards. Though they are likely only a small sample of such texts Richards recorded in his effort to keep Joseph Joseph’s journal. Joseph Nabu era journals were kept in two records. The first was kept by Willard Richards, William Clayton, Eliza Snow and Erastus Durie. That’s what you see on your screen. The book of the Law of the Lord. OK. Who recorded entries uh from December 1841 to December 1842 in that book. Now, beginning 21st December 1842 and continuing to the final week of the prophet’s life. Richards inscribed entries in four small volumes designated as President Joseph Smith’s journal. Now, the reason they call it that is because Richards called it that. Ok. So he called it President Joseph’s journal. So they feel like they can get away with calling it. I just wish they would be honest about really characterizing what these are entries in the former record are clean and relatively free from cancellations. Yeah, I wouldn’t call them clean. Um But because they
[54:48] Michelle: relatively is a helpful word there, they can be relatively clean, can decide what that
[54:54] Jeremy Hoop: means. And other scribal evidence that traditionally indicate point of first inscription, many of the entries were clearly written retrospectively also suggesting that the journal text with within the book of the Law of the Lord was copied from some other source, the book’s large size um would have rendered it inconvenient for Joe Smith strives to carry around in its concurrent use as a ledger for recording donations for construction of the temple meant that it was kept in the counting room on the lower floor of Joseph Smith’s brick store. Unless unlike the massive book of the law of the Lord, the subsequent Joseph Smith journal president Joseph Smith’s journal was kept in small pocket size memorandum books that Richards could easily have carried with him, textual evidence such as space to add detail later and incomplete words from hurried note taking indicate that many of the entries in the se second Nauvoo journal were inscribed contemporaneously. Other entries appear to have been written days after the events they describe and were likely based on draft notes like those reproduced here. Three of the four notes describe events recorded in entries during the periods for which Richards was describe of Joseph’s journals. OK. So we get the point. He’s got these four little memo books, OK, that he’s carrying around and he’s and he’s writing things sometimes on the day, we can’t really tell sometimes on the day sometimes retrospectively, but he’s leaving blank spaces. It’s not a traditional journal. It’s a draft, it’s a memo book to create a history later, but he’s also using other loose pieces of paper or other sources to copy from, to copy in there. You’ll notice he oftentimes will record sermons Joseph has given, he’s not recording that sermon on the day in that book. He’s because it’s too clean for that. And we’ll see that the way we’ll see. What will, what will Willard Richards writing looks like when he’s writing in a hurry. Ok. And as we mentioned, there are hundreds and hundreds. It’s not just a few. It’s hund uh, somebody counted. I haven’t counted myself. So I’m gonna take this at their word, but over 600 blank spaces and pages. OK. This is just, it’s, and all you have to do is go into the Joseph Smith papers and go through the journals and flip page after page after page. It’s unreal how much space is left in here. That’s why it’s not a journal, it’s a draft and he used it for other purposes. You don’t see this.
[57:11] Michelle: I, I just want to check with you. My assumption is that that was for future, the purpose of that was for future s at a time. And
[57:19] Jeremy Hoop: I don’t say that that’s nefarious by the way, especially in the beginning because Richards was the historian. I think he was keeping notes at least in the beginning. Now. By the way, it’s possible he didn’t write those at all on the day. It’s very possible that he recorded those after Joseph’s death. We can’t tell because you simply don’t know.
[57:41] Michelle: We need to pause here. Just specify clarify for anyone who’s not keeping up with this Willard Richards was a polygamist in Nauvoo. He was also. So if anyone’s wondering, that’s what we’re talking about this. Because Will William Clayton was a polygamist in Nauvoo. Willard Richards was a polygamist in Nauvoo. So I know people are like, oh, we’re conspiracy theorists. The fact is no matter which side of this you’re on, you’re a conspiracy theorist, whether you believe Joseph and his inner circle were lying. That’s a conspiracy, right? Or whether you believe many people were lying without Josephs and William Marks and several other people’s knowledge, it’s actually a small, a smaller conspiracy to understand that it was these people that, that’s what we’re talking about. And Willard Richards is absolutely in on it as is William Clayton
[58:26] Jeremy Hoop: and, and the, and many of those people lied at the time when they were actually actively practicing plural marriage or they knew about it being practiced. Um And they, they decried it publicly. Um But we’re doing the opposite what you see on your screen right now. It’s
[58:43] Michelle: important to acknowledge that I’m sorry. But, but it’s like people act like our stance is so ridiculous that we’re saying these people were lying about it publicly while doing it privately. They’re saying exactly the same thing about not only these people but Joseph Smith, the only difference is who was involved in this known conspiracy. And it’s not only Joseph and Hiram that weren’t, there were many, many that weren’t and a smaller number that were. So I want to just clarify that ours makes more sense. It’s a smaller conspiracy and a conspiracy that is provable and that has a hard evidence behind it and there isn’t. So anyway, just I needed to throw that in there. But you go ahead. I’m sorry to interrupt.
[59:21] Jeremy Hoop: That’s ok. What you see on your screen are the actual journals. There were scribes that kept journals for Joseph. Um uh Oliver Cowdery kept part of his journals. Warren Parish, kept part of his journals. You don’t see in these quote journals. What you see with Willard Richards. I point this out because these are actual day to day records. These are, these are guys writing stuff on the days. There’s no spaces there. They’re just, they’re messy. Um They’re contemporaneous and, and their recordings, they might have been recorded, you know, days after, but regardless they’re, they’re recorded like an actual journal entry to entry, to entry, to entry, um somewhat sloppy handwriting, recording contemporaneous events that Joseph is having them. He’s dictating to them and or they, they, they are, they are making mention of aspects of his life.
[1:00:13] Michelle: So they’re not premeditating future changes and Alternations. Ok. That’s good
[1:00:19] Jeremy Hoop: parish or whether it’s George Robinson or James Mulholland, the, the, the previous journals to, to Richards are all the same in terms of this type of recording, they change with Richard. So the Book of the Law of the Lord, which is considered one of the, it’s in the journal section that’s not really a journal. It’s more of a, uh uh of a history or a polished record. The Richards Joseph Smith journals are better described as memo books or drafts or draft notes to create Joseph’s history. I really would, I, I’m not gonna let the historians get away with this. Let’s start being accurate about how we identify documents. I don’t care what Richards called it. Let’s at least be accurate about what these are now. Why is this so important because of the pattern, you create contemporaneous notes and copy them later into another volume. Clayton participated with Richards in this effort at that time. Now Clayton, as we’ve shown and we’ll see followed this process in his own records creation. He would record contemporaneous notes, copy them into another record. He would leave blank spaces and pages when creating the new draft and then he creates what we call and we’ll examine this a clean or fair copy. Now, it should be noted that nothing, absolutely nothing in the Joseph Smith journals implicates in the well, calling them the journals in the memo books, uh implicates Joseph with polygamous activity or sympathy. Just the opposite. The only references to polygamy that by the way, this is one of the reasons why I give them some credibility because I think Richards is recording them somewhere around the time. OK? I think he’s purposefully leaving spaces because he knows later. I’m gonna write the history. I just, I’m making notes. I’m just gonna, I’m gonna compile all this stuff together. This is my main draft book that I’m creating, right? I’m leaving, but I gotta write the history later. So this, this is my working material. He would not, I don’t believe later on have written some of the things that he recorded in Joseph’s in this journal. Quote. Uh that, that where Joseph says, try everyone who’s practicing uh spiritual wifey. OK. Uh Polygamy is I forbid it? OK. And we’re going to examine that here as well. Can
[1:02:32] Michelle: I even add one other one other thing? Um One thing I found interesting is so Joseph Smith preached all day on July 16th and that’s where in the afternoon he preached about eternal marriage. And it’s interesting, eternal monogamous marriage. He didn’t even, you know, I have to point out monogamy because he didn’t know that polygamy was the thing that was happening under his nose. But William Clayton, I know, um Willard Richards, interestingly, he wasn’t there and he reports on his morning speeches and says nothing about the afternoon speech on eternal marriage but leaves a page and a half blank. So that’s a prime example right there of where it’s already being somewhat altered because it’s strange that it doesn’t there. You learn as much about what they don’t include as you do about what they do
[1:03:16] Jeremy Hoop: include. That’s an incredibly important point over time. There’s all kinds of things, whether it’s Elizabeth Ann Whitney, or whether it’s missing newspaper articles or whether it’s things that, that William Clayton, for example, does not record on a specific day. Like Hiram’s uh 8 April 1884 speech, William Clayton does not record it at all. Um He gives vague reference to it in his journal, but he records it on the wrong day, which is interesting. And so um the only references, by the way in the Richards Journal uh or the the Richards memo book um show that Joseph was decidedly categorically against it. And this will be examined a little more later. So let’s examine.
[1:04:01] Michelle: So I have a question. So the, so just repeat that last part is what is categorically against it. That’s the Richard’s
[1:04:08] Jeremy Hoop: book in the memo book. Yes. In the Richards memo books, there’s no instances of Joseph being connected to plural marriage. The only instances relating to plural marriage or spiritual wifey are Joseph being against it or preaching or speaking against it. The only instances,
[1:04:26] Michelle: one thing I think is interesting there is that from what you just read, this memo book was kept most likely in the red book store where Joseph Smith and the other scribes and other people could read it and have access to
[1:04:38] Jeremy Hoop: possibly, possibly, these are small. These are, these are like, these are small. They’re about, they’re about five by uh seven inches. They’re the, they’re the little books that you see on top of the book of the Law of the Lord. That’s that those are the actual books themselves and so he could, he could carry them around in his bag. I think the, I think these were, these were, he was keeping memos, he was just keeping track of stuff and this was for a later usage and he was also recording other things and other pieces of paper and somehow bringing some of those in there. So it’s, it’s not entirely clear when he was recording these. The, the point of this is to draw the line between Richards and Clayton and their work, their, their joint work frankly as scribes um who would later also work together on Joseph’s history. So now let’s examine the pattern. Clayton’s work with the Council of 50 record. This, we’re gonna go a little more detail because this is critical to understanding the Nauvoo. He was a clerk for the council of 50 starting in early 1844 when the council was created, he was the main clerk really that kept the rough contempo temp contemporaneous minutes. There were other clerks as well, but he did the bulk of it. Joseph asked him and all the other clerks to destroy the minutes. There’s a reason for that because the, the mob, Joseph was afraid the mob was coming. There were some things that Joseph talked about where and I believe he was ordained a king. OK. This is a spirit
[1:06:08] Michelle: get it to the council of 50. Well, I’ll, I’ll address that in the podcast.
[1:06:11] Jeremy Hoop: In the point of that is Joseph, the papers make it clear that, that Joseph’s concerned that, that the, the minutes could be used against him. So he asked people to destroy the minutes and other leaders like Brigham Young would ask the minutes to be destroyed as well after Joseph dies. Well, Clayton kept them and he used them to create a clean or fair copy after Joseph’s death. Without anyone’s knowledge, Clayton held on to these records for over two years and then he finally handed, handed them over to Brigham Young in 1847. So let’s read from the JSP to understand a little bit about these. This is so important because this will help us to understand what he’s doing with it with his Nabu journal. The novel era minutes of the Council of 50 were recorded in three small blank books kept by council clerk William Clayton. His journal entry for 5 october 1845 notes that he spent the day recording minutes of the council of 50 that he recorded 43 pages of a small record like this indicating that the blank book he was using for the council record was small like his own journal. In fact, it’s exactly like his own journal. Now just put that in the back of your mind. OK. The volumes of the Council of 50 are ex almost identical with minute millimeter difference, but they’re basically the same type of record book. Oddly enough, they actually happen to be the exact same size as the Richards memo books, which is interesting. I don’t know, we can draw an inference from that or not, but they’re the same exact type of volume. Ok. Which is interesting because his England journal is very different. Brigham Young’s journal is different. All these other journals are very different, but for whatever reason, the council of 50 the Nauvoo and the Richards memo books are all basically the same. So indicating the blank book he was using for the council record was small like his own journal, Clayton’s journal for that period is very close in size and shape to the volumes in which he recorded the council of 50 minutes. Both Richards and Clayton had considerable clerical, clerical experience. Richards served as the regular clerk of the quorum of the 12 apostles since at least 1841 keeping minutes of meetings and writing correspondence on behalf of the quorum, jumping ahead either then might have served well as record keeper. But the records presented in this volume were almost all created originally by Clayton and were all inscribed by him into the permanent record. The survival of original rough copies and later fair copies of Clayton’s Minutes for early Utah meetings may provide a window into how Clayton produced the Nabu Era Minutes. While it is evident that the n the Nabu record books that Clayton was copying additional Council documents such as letters, the uh the later original and fair copies reveal just how extensively Clayton relied on such documents. OK. Pause. So for these council of 50 minutes, he’s again using other sources, other minutes, rough minutes, letters, notations to compile what we’re gonna find in this council of 50 record.
[1:09:05] Michelle: So is this showing us his methods, his methods?
[1:09:09] Jeremy Hoop: You might think this is tedious and boring. And I admit it’s extremely tedious and extremely boring. However, it’s critical to understand his work here to understand what I think we’re going to see going to see. In fact, I know we’re going to see in the NUJ, for example, it appears that instead of noting who was present in in his original minutes, Clayton relied on an on an attendance role which he later used to record the names of attendees when he produced the fair copy of the minutes. Additionally, Clayton appears to have relied on written motions submitted to the chair to help formulate his minutes. And in in his rough minutes, Clayton simply numbered the motion named the council members who had offered it in the fair copy, he then transcribed and paraphrased the written motion in addition to cleaning up the language and format of the original minutes. As he prepared the fair copy, Clayton actively reworked his minutes to better conform to parliamentary order and to produce an administrative focus by summarizing or leaving out some of the remarks captured in his rough minutes. Nevertheless, a comparison between these original minutes and the copy in the record book reveals that Clayton made a number of changes to the minutes, adding or deleting words and phrases in an attempt to clarify or Polish the text. Although Clayton began keeping minutes for the council in 10 March 1844 he did not begin the council’s record book until the summer of 1844. This is after Joseph is dead at 11 o’clock in the morning. On 23rd, June 1844 Clayton was summoned by council member John P Green to Js Joseph Smith home, Joseph Smith had received a letter from Illinois. Governor Thomas Ford insisting that he and other men charged with the destruction of the Nauvoo expositor, surrender to authorities fearing they would not receive justice. Joseph Smith determined to cross the Mississippi River. During the night, Clayton stated that when he arrived at Joseph Smith’s home, Joseph whispered and told me either to put the records of the kingdom into the hands of some faithful men and send them away or burn them or bury them. I don’t know that I believe by the way that Joseph told him to preserve them in any way because none of the other clerks say that all of the other clerks as we’ll see, um, say they were told to destroy them, but neither here nor there. This is what he says, Joseph says, Clayton returned home and immediately put the records in a small box and buried them in his garden. Around five o’clock that morning, Clayton returned to Joseph’s office and gathered all the public and private records together and buried them. Richards received similar instructions from Joseph to destroy the records, root and branch. So Richards was told, don’t leave anything, but apparently Clayton was told, yeah, you can, you can hang on to him, just keep him safe. Joseph apparently worried that the papers of the council of 50 would be confiscated and used against him. Joseph apparently worried that uh excuse me. In February 1845 Richards told the council that following these instructions, he had destroyed the council papers in his possession, which may explain why only one routine council paper for 1844 an apology for absence by Almon Babbitt on 5 May 1844 survived. Clayton apparently felt that the immediate danger of the council papers being confiscated passed after the murder of Joseph on the 27th of June 1844 on the third of July. Clayton dug up the records that had been buried, noting that water had got into the place where they were and they were damaged by mid August. The immediate issue of who would succeed Joseph as leader of the church in Navoo had been settled in favor of the quorum of the 12 and Clayton had begun to meet with them and other church leaders as church affairs gradually resumed on the 15th of August. After attending a meeting with the 12, the Navoo House Association and the Temple Committee, the core group that initially formed the council of 50. Clayton noted that a very good feeling prevails in the breasts of the brethren. Around this time, Clayton began working on the first record book of the council of 50. On 18 August 1844 Clayton wrote in his journal that he spent the day at his office copying the record of the kingdom. On 6th September, he again noted spending the day copying the record for the initial 10 March entry in the record book. Clayton must have had access to the original letters from George Miller and Lyman White or a later copy because he began copying the letters into the record book because the original minutes of the council meeting from 1014 to March March 14 had been burned. Clayton then reconstructed brief accounts of these meetings using his journal memory and possibly other documents. Beginning with the entry in the record book for the 19 March 1844 meeting. Clayton was apparently working from original minutes or notes as the minutes became longer and more detailed. Still on only a few uh 1844 entries approached the level of detail contained in the 1845 entries. Yada yada. In on first of March, the council voted that the minutes be destroyed. I wanted to point that out because this destruction of these minutes is a continual theme that Clayton ignores after which Clayton put them.
[1:13:56] Michelle: Well, well, you’re finished. Then I have several questions. Yeah. Go ahead and finish. And
[1:14:00] Jeremy Hoop: then after which Clayton put them in a stove and burned them up for this example, as well as from later Utah era minutes. It appears that Clayton’s production of the minutes may have gone through three stages. At least some of the time. First, he took rough minutes during a meeting. Second, he prepared a loose copy to be read in the next meeting. And third, he made a fair copy of the minutes in the record books. OK. So he was keeping his own little rec no matter what he was destroying, he kept his own minutes and his own records behind the scene. And then he would transfer whatever he had into this, what’s called a clean and fair copy as the council met more regularly in March and April 1845 Clayton dedicated more time to copying the minutes. According to his journal from 6th March to 28 April, he spent 20 days copying minutes. He’s very actively engaged. You see this in his own journal, his nau journal, I spent the day copying the records of the kingdom, spent the day copying the records of the kingdom he’s doing this day after day after day, Clayton May. So can
[1:14:57] Michelle: I ask you two questions quickly? First does anybody know he’s doing this because Joseph told everyone to destroy them. I don’t want the gun if you. Ok. And then I have a question. Do you? And, and you can tell me if I’m asking too soon. Do you have any indication of why he would disregard what, why he would do
[1:15:17] Jeremy Hoop: this? I have a speculation but I’m gonna call it speculation. We don’t, we don’t know exactly. But I, but I have a strong, I have a strong suspicion. Yes, we will. Clayton may have begun making the permanent record based on instruction from Joseph Smith or his own accord. That’s interesting. He may have. He may have either from Joseph Smith. It’s interesting that they say that obviously you can speculate, they may have, but there is absolutely no indication that Joseph ever told him to do this
[1:15:47] Michelle: and Joseph told him to destroy them. So
[1:15:49] Jeremy Hoop: exactly, enigmatic statements in the 1845 minutes when the council reconvened suggest that it is possible that neither the council chairman Brigham Young nor the council recorder Willard Richards was aware of Clayton’s record when the council, when the council reorganized in February 1845 Lucian Wood Woodworth requested that the minutes of the first councils be read to which Young responded that quote, all the minutes were burned up while Young’s statement may refer only to the 14th March 1844 decision to burn the minutes of the first few meetings. Additional discussions suggests that many council members including George Miller and Richards interpreted the lack of re records more broadly later in the in the meeting, Miller appears to have questioned Young’s statement quote in regards to the records as he quote, supposed that they had been preserved, but he had learned since that they were destroyed to this. Richards responded that in accordance with Joseph’s instructions, he had destroyed the records. Although Clayton spoke immediately after Richards, he did not correct the statements on four Marches. So, so the fact that the Joseph Smith papers speculate that, well, maybe Joseph told him, sorry to, to even put that in the same sentence. If they’re gonna be fair, they would say it’s possible to, to speculate that Joseph might have said this, but there is absolutely no evidence that Joseph ever did. So it is curious as to why Clayton is doing this when no one else apparently knows. Ok, that’s the fair way to make that statement
[1:17:26] Michelle: does not say anything about it. There’s no evidence that Joseph Smith told him to. So you could just leave it out, which would be the most fair and the most accurate
[1:17:33] Jeremy Hoop: way. What it does is it is it doesn’t address what is happening here, which we will see it does not address Clayton himself and his pattern or his character. On 4 March 1845 Richards proposed that the council allow Clayton quote the privilege of taking the minutes and retaining them to copy some names from them before destroying them, still supposed to destroy them. Um Similar motions were made by Richards on 11 and 18 March. At which point, he suggested making it a standing rule of the council that quote, the clerk be instructed hereafter to burn up all the minutes of these councils as fast as he has done with them until otherwise instructed by the council end quote. It is unclear whether Richards knew at this point that Clayton was making a complete copy of the Minutes or whether he was concerned with the loose minutes, which could be more easily lost or misappropriated. I think we will see that he had no, no idea whatsoever as we will see. Now, I want to point this out. So on your left, you see the rough minutes that Clayton was taking on the right. You see, for the very same day, the clean minutes, we’re gonna examine this more closely, but I want to point this out that we were step
[1:18:46] Michelle: one and two of the three or there was the rough minutes. Then the draft copy, then the clean copies. Yeah, this
[1:18:52] Jeremy Hoop: is, this is r these are rough minutes, but he would, he would have very, at the moment, you know, contemporaneous recording. I think that is step two on the left because it’s a little cleaner and, and we’re gonna see how we’re gonna see what Clayton looks like when he’s writing. Writing something. Actually, in the moment we’re gonna see that where he’s writing um stream of consciousness or, or recording something contemporaneously, I wanna point out again. Nevertheless, a comparison between these original minutes and the copy in the record book reveals that Clayton made a number of changes to the minutes, adding or deleting words and phrases in attempt to clarify and polish the text again. He is, he feels him as a scribe, he feels liberty to do so. Ok, to take things that aren’t there and to add them to the clean record. Now, did you catch this? Did you catch really catch and let it sink in and nobody knows, nobody knows that he’s doing this. Now, they speculate, maybe they knew, maybe they knew, I think I can prove that they absolutely did not know. And we’re gonna see why. Ok. He kept those records. Clayton apparently kept the council records with him until he left Nauvoo in 1846 as they do not appear in inventory made when the church records were packed up for the exodus to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake and it records of the council of 50 in April 1847. In winter quarters, Clayton gave the records to Brigham Young finally who apparently transported them west. Now, the Joseph Smith papers just kind of make scant reference to this. Oh, well, he had them. We didn’t, didn’t, they didn’t really know and he just gave them over to Brigham Young. Now, what, why Alan helps us understand
[1:20:38] Michelle: these pictures? This guy, ok.
[1:20:42] Jeremy Hoop: This guy you see is a, is a, is a pretty infamous guy named Hosea Stout. There are some guys, Bill Hickman, Hosea Stout. Warn Rockwell. These guys need to be understood in order to understand Brigham Young. John D Lee. John D Lee as well. I think these guys are, are, are arguably far worse than John D Lee ever was. But Allen says the following about a little incident that happened in 1847 Clayton’s reports were certainly not unbiased. Speaking of, um, somebody called Hosea Stout, but at least his journal suggests the problems that could occur on such a trip trip on May 17th, 1847 he expressed disappointment with Bishop Miller who had passed by without leaving him any cattle though the Bishop himself had plenty a month later as he rationed out bread to his company. He noted that the men seemed quote very much dis satisfied and growled to each other very much. And I have to chuckle because in his journal, he’s constantly complaining, he is constantly complaining about getting the short end of the stick on stuff. We’ll talk about that later. Such grumbling was not uncommon but perhaps more serious was the personal animosity between Clayton and at least one other member of the camp Jos Stout seemed to dislike the camp clerk with a passion and the feeling was returned. The reason for the conflict escapes the historian. Oh, James, I’m sorry that it escapes you. But as Clayton saw it, stout even threatened to kill him, some potential problems were avoided. When after William Clayton was instructed to go west with the pioneers of 1847 Brigham Young unexpectedly told stout to remain as the camp of the guard at winter quarters. So he doesn’t reprimand stout. He leaves him in place but he sends Clayton off, uh, to go west.
[1:22:35] Michelle: Ok. Now, are you gonna explain this? Now, am I missing some? Ok. Ok. I just, I’m like, I need you to explain that to me. Ok.
[1:22:42] Jeremy Hoop: So for whatever reason, and it’s unexplained in the journal, we don’t know why Jose is Stout so upset with him and we don’t know why. All we know is what Clayton says in his journal. I’ll read it. April of the 11th, 1847 on a Sunday at home at Fars. That’s, uh, his father-in-law’s house, Diantha Fars, uh, Winslow Far, her dad, I told Winslow Far concern concerning Hosea Stout’s threats to take my life after the 12 are gone. And et cetera, he called at night on his return from the council and told me to be on my guard. April 13th, 1847 2 days later at home, most of the day, Thomas and James started for the farm evening, went to the store and told Brigham and Heber about Hosea Stout’s calculations and et cetera. April 14th the following day, Wednesday. This morn morning, severally severely pained with rheumatism in my face. At 11 o’clock, Brigham and Doctor Richards came in. B told me to rise up and start with the pioneers in half an hour’s notice. Get up and get out.
[1:23:48] Michelle: Ok. We move across the plains in half an hour’s notice. Like, like I couldn’t go camping with half an hour’s notice. Move move forever. 2000 miles. Ok. I’m OK.
[1:24:02] Jeremy Hoop: So the n the day after he says he’s trying to kill me, he’s threatened to kill me. They think about it the next morning, they talk about it with him. Get up and go. You got a half hour and then the very next sentence I delivered to him, the records of the Kingdom of God, explain this to me in the world on the same day that Clayton tells Brigham that Stout’s trying to kill him. He delivers the records. We’ll come back to this. Hold that thought because this is an important piece of the puzzle that apparently James Allen couldn’t put together. So summary of Clayton’s creation of council 50 minutes. He works as a clerk. He’s the main clerk, Joseph asks him and the other clerks, I submit. Joseph did not tell him you could keep them. Ok? Because all the other clerks had burned them root and branch as Richard says, but he says, I could keep him anyway. He, he was asked to destroy them.
[1:25:06] Michelle: Clayton was special. Joseph always was. Clayton was special. Of
[1:25:11] Jeremy Hoop: course, he was. Clayton didn’t burn them, he kept them, use them in other documents to create a clean or fair copy of Joseph after Joseph’s death. OK. So he starts this right after Joseph’s death in September of 1844. Without anyone’s knowledge, Clayton held onto these records for over two years and he finally handed them over to Brigham Young in 1847. We’ll come back to this later. This is very important. Now, can Clayton’s long history? Can his long, long history with copying and creating records help us understand his NOVO journal better? This is of course called the Smoking Gun. This is what puts Joseph at the scene of the crime. Here’s a little intro. So there are two primary journals and a third tertiary uh James uh that comprise the NAU journals, James Allen um is gonna tell us a lot about the substance of the journals Robert Filler up, helps us understand the dating of the journals, which is really, really vital. We’re going to examine pieces of the actual journals themselves. Things I don’t think many people have been able to find. Um Oh, sorry, we’re gonna examine actual journals. Clayton’s actual journals, real journals, not the NUVO journals, Clayton’s real journals, Richard’s real journals, Kimball’s and Youngs. And then remember Clayton’s copy and documentation crea creation process um was part of something called Clayton’s private book. He had a private book, compare that we’re gonna compare the journals to the council of 50 record. And then we’re gonna look at 57 pages that I’ve been able to find of the actual journal, the actual pictures of the journal itself to see if that can tell something
[1:26:47] Michelle: other than just the paper. Is that where you were able to find
[1:26:50] Jeremy Hoop: him? Ok. They, I don’t think they know what they’ve done and then why the Clayton Journal is a clean fair, a later creation, a clean fair copy, a later creation. And it cannot be said to be contemporaneous um or a diary. So, so in
[1:27:07] Michelle: that editorial process, you’re saying it’s the third step, there were the notes, then the draft copy, then the clean or fair copy. So it’s number three,
[1:27:15] Jeremy Hoop: we’re, we’re going to see that and I think we can provide definitive proof of it. And we’re also going to examine how his journals are used in the creation of Joseph Smith history and why that’s important. So from James Allen, Clayton made the first entry in his three NUVO journals on November 27th, 1842. For some reason, there is more than an 18 month long gap after the end of the Manches, uh an eight month gap. Sorry at the end of the Manchester Journal, though it’s possible even probable that Clayton kept some kind of record that’s been lost. We know that’s actually not just probable, it’s for certain um the journals are a bit difficult to follow for the entries are not always strictly chronological. Apparently Clayton began writing in one journal, moved to another for some reason, then moved back to the original. As a result, the researcher must move back and forth between the volumes. Sometimes there are two entries for the same day and it’s not clear why. Ok. I think we can figure out why. Frankly. Now, Robert
[1:28:17] Michelle: filler lot of irregularities.
[1:28:20] Jeremy Hoop: Very strange. It’s a little difficult to follow. As James Allen says, now Robert Filler up, gives us the dates and we can find these dates. They’re buried in the Joseph Smith papers too. We, we can, we can discern them in other places, but he helps us understand in book one, it covers the period of 27 November 1842 to 28 April 1843. And then there’s a 17 month gap and the very next entry in this one volume picks up on the 25th of September 1844 through the 31st of March 1845. Very strange. This is what Alan is referring to. You have to go from one journal and you go to the other and you go back to the other. OK. So now that’s Nabu journal one nuo two covers the gap. OK. Very weird. I, I wanna, I like to call it the gap book. So when I call it the gap book, you know which one I’m referring to book two. It’s the book that covers the gap in the, in the, in the book one. OK. It goes from
[1:29:26] Michelle: two is a critical period. Sorry, you’re just gonna say that you
[1:29:32] Jeremy Hoop: can see the dates. It’s 27 8 27. April 1843 to 24. September 1844. This is a critical time and we’re gonna see how critical this journal is and there’s no
[1:29:44] Michelle: insight from, from the beginning. Do you have an insight of why William Clayton did
[1:29:48] Jeremy Hoop: that? I’m going to, I’m going to opine on the subject and people can judge whether or not my opinion has validity.
[1:29:58] Michelle: Ok. But, but James Allen just says it’s strange.
[1:30:01] Jeremy Hoop: It’s strange. It’s just, it’s just strange. Then there’s a third that it doesn’t have a cover. It’s only about, it’s 14 pages of actual text, maybe some 15 or 16 pages of paper. It was tucked into the volume one. It was just found tucked in
[1:30:18] Michelle: and it covers a very long period. No, no, no,
[1:30:22] Jeremy Hoop: sorry. I wrote that incorrectly. That that should be 44. That’s a clerical error. It’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s a daily record kept by William Clayton. This is from the JSP. Yeah, that focuses on Joseph Smith’s activities during the nine days preceding his flight to Nauvoo. Ok. Clayton’s journal contains entries that highlight his own activities on these same days suggesting that his record on Joseph Smith may be a second authorized journal of Joseph Smith authorized journal. Um though no evidence has been found indicating the Smith commission Clayton to keep such a record. I love how they have to keep doing this
[1:30:57] Michelle: because it could be, but there’s no evidence
[1:31:02] Jeremy Hoop: they must maintain his credibility at all costs. Now, James Allen also can comment on what we have available to us that’s been published, that, that the notes that Andy E Hat took that were published by the Tanners and that what George Smith published later and that Philip was published. He’s gonna comment on these uh on what on what is in an intimate chronicle. He wrote a review of an intimate chronicle in 1995. It’s not very um flattering. Despite its strengths, several problems are inherent in this publication journal two. When he says journal two, he doesn’t mean what I mean. He means the entirety of the Nau Clayton journals. OK? Because uh George D Smith uh gives us six of Clayton’s journals which go from England all the way to the pioneer journal. OK. And it has the Nabu Temple record and su and such journal two for um for George D Smith is the NUVO portion. OK. Which, which is those three? OK. Does that make sense? Is that clear? So when, when Alan’s referring to journal two, he’s referring to all three together. OK. Despite its strengths, several pro problems are inherent in this publication journal two is so incomplete. That cannot be relied upon to provide a full or balanced perspective. By the way, let me pause for a second in another, in another podcast. It was on um RF MS podcast. One of the commentators gave brief mention to this that he said, well, Alan kind of complained about the journals that is so ridiculous frankly to, to characterize what Alan says, let’s let Alan speak for himself. And
[1:32:47] Michelle: this, this is
[1:32:48] Jeremy Hoop: a, this is, he said, James Allen. James Allen, you know, said they weren’t that great, you know, the, the, the intimate chronicle. He, he kind of tried to give a balanced um comment to say that James Allen uh didn’t like what was published, but he didn’t explain what James Allen says. That’s why I’m going to read this. And it should be noted, James Allen is one of the only people to ever have. Well prior to recently to ever have worked extensively with Clayton’s actual journal. He knows it inside and out. He used it as the source material for the biography that he created on Clayton. And he, and
[1:33:24] Michelle: he had seen it as well.
[1:33:26] Jeremy Hoop: He had um my understanding is that he had access to the journals, whether or not he read them every page. I don’t know. Um he worked from the, the typescript that Alan and Dean Jesse made of the journal. He worked from that type script first, but I think he was also given access. So e hat saw it. I think Quinn only saw either the typescript that Alan made or the type script that E hat made. I’m not certain which um and then recently we have a team of people supposedly working on the journal. So there’s other people that have access to them now. But very few people in the public discourse have ever even seen these. OK. And James Allen’s in his nineties.
[1:34:05] Michelle: OK. So, so for me to understand what you’re reading here. So this is James Allen commenting on what was published of William Clayton’s journals from the notes that got out correct.
[1:34:18] Jeremy Hoop: He’s commenting on George D Smith’s in intimate chronicle, which is all anyone has had access to publicly and he’s gonna tell us what is contained in that and why he has trouble with it. He says the most problematical document in this collection is Journal two, Nabu Illinois 1842 to 46. That’s those three volumes I mentioned the original three volumes which comprise this journal are owned by the LDS church and cover the period of 27 November 1842 to 30 January 1846 scholars should be wary of this abridgment. However, for the editor did not have access to the original journals. Instead, he relied for the most part on highly selected excerpts compiled in 1979 by Andrew E had as notes for his specific research interests and he had who you see on your screen was a, was a grad student at BYU and was this was during Leonard Arrington. And they, they had this brief period of great openness in the church archives which they later learned they don’t want to do again because you know, things leak out. And several scholars including Mike Quinn and Andy E Hat and James Allen and and others, Dean Jesse and others were given access, I believe Van Wagner was also given access as well. Anyway, they got in there and they all had their various interests that they were researching and Andy Hat was very interested in the Clayton journals and he, and he combed through Allen’s typescript and excerpted from the type script and then was also given access apparently to see the journals themselves. How much he time he had with him. I don’t know, unfortunately,
[1:35:49] Michelle: has a type script and we don’t have
[1:35:51] Jeremy Hoop: access to Alan has the only full one that yes, the only full one ever made apparently is Alan’s and he has never released it because he has been faithful to the church’s request to keep it secret and maybe he turned it over, maybe he doesn’t even have it in his possession. But that type script was made and it’s never been released. Allen continues, unfortunately. And though through no uh direct fault of e hats, these excerpts were purloined and copied in an unauthorized way by yet another person and he kept it in an office where he was offing uh with a, with a, a bishop on BYU campus. And for whatever reason, other people came into the office, found the notes and they took them, made photocopies of them and they circulated like wildfire.
[1:36:35] Michelle: I have to, I have to say like my heart breaks for Andrew E hat. I think what happened to him was
[1:36:40] Jeremy Hoop: absolutely, it was horrible. And, and I heard him on, on uh in some um historians group setting talking about it, you can tell this was extremely heartbreaking for him because of it because because of how this got out and he still is affected by it today.
[1:36:57] Michelle: And he, and, and I like what Alan said that he was, he was doing specific research. He only, we don’t even fully understand why he chose the excerpts he chose, but it certainly should not be used as a fair representation of the Clayton Journal. And the fact that it has been used by historians to make this entire narrative. Despite what I I mean, this whole thing is insane. It’s so problematic
[1:37:19] Jeremy Hoop: as he continues, like the proverbial feathers tossed to the wind duplicates spread rapidly. The excerpts were eventually published and approved with no editing in a photo duplicate by form by Gerald and Sandra Tanner’s modern microfilm company of Salt Lake City that later went to court and the Tanners actually won um that they had a right to publish it. Smith’s abridgement is based almost entirely on that source, with some editions from a few other sources. Smith’s introduction to, by the way, if you want to read the best one, it’s Robert Filler up because what filler up does is he, he extracts from all of Alan’s writings where Alan actually quotes from the journal because Alan’s quoting directly from the journal and that and many of the quotes Alan uses are not in the Andy E Hat excerpt. So Philip compiles it all. So if you want to read the best one that’s available, it’s filler
[1:38:08] Michelle: up. OK. I’ll attach it below because it’s available online on the archive.org. So, so it’ll be in the links.
[1:38:15] Jeremy Hoop: Um Smith’s introduction to this journal leaves some misleading impressions about its full content. He says for example, that the E hat excerpts comprise approximately one half of the original holograph journal since. However, he never s since he never saw the holograph. However, he had no way of knowing that there are actually 1170 daily entries in the three journals. Smith provides a full or nearly reproduction of 100 and two entries. 8.7% and partial reproductions of another 254 21.7%. Considering all the emissions from the partial entries, it is safe to estimate that less than 25% of the whole is included in this publication. Scholars should be very cau cautious when they try to interpret what is there for 75% of the whole is missing. Moreover, in the case of the Nabu journals, George Smith took no real part in the abridgement. All he had before him were ehat excerpts which were never intended as an abridgement. They were merely verbatim notes to be used in E hat’s writing. They were not meant to be published as a collection. What was finally published in by modern microfilm unfortunately was an agglomeration of unconnected except as they related to ee hats studies and out of context excerpts that piqued the interest of the curious because they seemed somewhat sensational. Now, I don’t think they seem somewhat sensational. They are extraordinarily sensational. Uh So sorry, James, I disagree with you. Smith correctly observes that Clayton’s journals were the source for many entries in the documentary history of the Church edited by Bh Roberts. But he wrongly suggests that most of the 1843 1845 entries are present in edited form in that history. Actually, for the period before the death of Joseph Smith, only about 25 of the daily history of the church entries are clearly drawn from Clayton’s journals. We’re gonna see. It’s quite a bit more than that in the whole of the history, but we’ll see. But are these journals and why would it matter if they weren’t? So let what Alan sinks in, just let that help us be a little more cautious. Just a little more when we’re examining these and and let the one of the only men who has had extensive access to them has made a full type script, really understands the journals inside and out. Let let his words speak and let them be considered.
[1:40:35] Michelle: Can I also make another point here that I find just fascinating. So this whole mess happened, right? Like this is a mess the church has to acknowledge has to know this is a mess, right? You would think that it’s like, oh, shoot, we let all of this out. This just happened. Oh, well, I guess we better just release the journals now to put this all to rest.
[1:40:57] Jeremy Hoop: This is why this creates adverse inference,
[1:41:00] Michelle: right. Right. The fact that they’re like this mess, this is better than what’s in the actual journals is really problematic for all of us to consider. And it’s important to also recognize even in what Alan is saying, he is a consummate apologist, his entire everything about him is being an apologist for the church and an apologist for Clayton with a determination to to believe Clayton that that that borders on worship in his own words, right? So everything that Alan says, we have to also view through that lens. It is insane that all of this happened. And the church is like, no, you can’t see the rest. You just make your assumptions about him and we have to know that whatever assumptions we’re going to make about them is not as bad as what they actually contain.
[1:41:46] Jeremy Hoop: Alan will give us, he’ll give us further context uh in a few minutes about the journals themselves to help us balance them out and it is critical to understand. And I think by the way, what Clay, what Allen admits helps us to understand why the church is not, has not released them. OK. At least a little now what you see on your screen to that
[1:42:13] Michelle: or are you telling us now
[1:42:15] Jeremy Hoop: we’re coming to that. That’s, uh, it’s an important piece. This is suspense
[1:42:21] Michelle: in this presentation.
[1:42:22] Jeremy Hoop: This is from Brigham Young’s actual journal. Um, this is what an actual journal looks like if you there, I think there are three of his journals that we have. Um, they’re just a mess. They’re like a normal, like mine, my journals, I can’t even read my journals half the time. Um, because I’m, I’m, I’m just, I’m getting stuff out and, ah, and I go back and read it and what the heck did I write on that day? Well, Brigham’s is kind of that way and so is Heber Kimball? He Heber Kimball is a real mess. It’s just, uh, you know, it’s like what you’d expect sometimes doodling scratching, uh, recording certain kind of things that happen and, and, uh, it’s very messy. It’s very much an actual journal. And of course, when we look at Willard Willard Richards journal, Willard’s is even worse than theirs here is his is really, really sloppy and messy and it’s day to day and it’s actually a journal and even when we look at
[1:43:11] Michelle: them people access these pages,
[1:43:12] Jeremy Hoop: those are all in the church history library. Ok. Ok. You can find all of those journals, the actual pages in the church history library, um, online.
[1:43:23] Michelle: Yeah. Go,
[1:43:23] Jeremy Hoop: go, go download them. You can, they let you download them so long as you don’t use them for, for commercial purposes, then you can actually have them a copy of it and you can, you can go try to read it. It’s really hard to read. You know, it is hard stuff. This is Clayton’s own journal as we showed before. This is from his mission journal, his actual day to day recording. And by the way, in this journal, one of the ways you can tell it’s a journal because he’s actually talking about himself revealing things about himself that maybe he might not want out that somebody else has to come in later and has to scratch out.
[1:43:58] Michelle: You can see just one small reduction. There are much, much, much larger
[1:44:01] Jeremy Hoop: reduction. We have 12 pages of people scratching stuff out. And so this helps us understand what a contemporaneous record looks like. And remember the importance of a contemporaneous record that can actually be used in court and a contemporaneous record in the historical sense is what we rely on. The very, very, very most in journals are one of those things we rely on the most to help us understand what was actually going on. What’s going on in the mind of the person. Does it corroborate with other things that are happening on the outside, with letters, with newspapers, with other people’s journals, you know, a contemporaneous record and later memoirs, later memoirs do not hold the same weight in understanding the history.
[1:44:42] Michelle: I’m thinking of, I’m thinking of myself like the humiliation you feel when you go read your 13 year old journal that you hope your kids, you know me as a girl. Like so and so is so rude. And so and so you know what I mean? Like that’s what it’s, that’s the value of a contemporaneous journal. If I were to write my life history, I would just, I wouldn’t go into that 13 year old journal, right? And so that principle continues, once you have the historical mindset and you’re in a completely different place with a completely different set of motivations and worldview, you clean it up to make it very different than what the actual journal would have told you. So that’s why this is so important. II I just want people to really understand the difference there like that messy daily record that you keeping it just whatever mood you’re in versus the later I’m gonna clean this up. It’s a big, big difference.
[1:45:35] Jeremy Hoop: It’s a huge difference. And I think anyone who is discerning at all can discern between something that’s written like a journal and something is not. Now, can we tell, can we tell if these are or not contemporaneous records? Now, one thing that can help us, I believe is looking at the work of actual scribes, how, how their work determines the kind of record that they’re creating. And can we determine from their penmanship? What kind of record they’re creating? For example, Thomas Books, Thomas Bullock, who was one of the primary clerks, both at the end of Joseph’s life and through the Brigham Brigham Young administration, very key figure in creating the history of the church. This is from his own journal. I this is ridiculous. It almost looks like Egyptian. It looks like Sanskrit. It, it’s crazy. Um It’s a
[1:46:31] Michelle: and yeah, just OK,
[1:46:33] Jeremy Hoop: this is from a letter that he wrote to William Clayton in 1853. By the way, it’s a very, very important letter, very important letter. We don’t have time to get into it, but it reveals so much about William Clayton. But this one’s even really hard. This is a letter and apparently William could read it. It’s really hard to read. Then you look at his minutes when he’s recording some, this is some semiofficial. This is, this is rough minutes from a from an actual contemporaneous note notes that he took of of the April 1844 the six through nine conference. Um This
[1:47:06] Michelle: is, this is cleaned up. This isn’t the contemporary, this isn’t the actual notes. This is, yeah, we
[1:47:10] Jeremy Hoop: don’t, we don’t know when he recorded this. We have no idea. Um, but this looks
[1:47:14] Michelle: like what I have to read when I’m trying to get Hiram speech from.
[1:47:18] Jeremy Hoop: This is, this is actually Hiram speech. It’s
[1:47:20] Michelle: really hard to, it’s hard
[1:47:22] Jeremy Hoop: to read and yet this is cleaner than the previous two. Ok.
[1:47:28] Michelle: So this even, ok, so this one could have been cleaned up though is what
[1:47:32] Jeremy Hoop: I think what this indicates is he is actually he’s not being meticulous, uh, in the degree that we’ll see that he can. This gives some indication that I think that he’s either doing this in a hurry somewhat in a hurry or um, he’s not doing this for an official record. This is a draft of some kind. Ok.
[1:47:49] Michelle: This is much cleaner than the first.
[1:47:52] Jeremy Hoop: Now, look at this. Now, you can read this clearly. This is a letter to his wife Henrietta and you can tell by this letter he loves this woman and, and he, this, this is Bullock’s writing to his, to his wife in 1857 in 1848. This is a blessing, an official blessing that he gave her. Now, this is a think of, think of their mindset about blessings. Ok. These are, these are official recordings to be something to be kept and preserved and look at how gorgeous his writing is. Ok. It’s absolutely stunning how he can write and if you go back to the original and compare it and this is um from the history, the official history book that he was working on with Richards. This is the, this is um the official preprint draft, ok, that they would later serialize and print in the papers. It is gorgeous writing. This man has a talent for penmanship, ok. That’s, that’s Thomas Bullock now
[1:48:51] Michelle: write like that. It’s almost like he didn’t want the previous ones to be read by almost
[1:48:55] Jeremy Hoop: almost he’s writing so fast. He’s writing in his own code. There are things I write that I can read that nobody else can read. Ok? And this is Richards in his own journal. It’s just a mess, absolute mess. This is Richards and Joseph’s quote Joseph’s journal. One of the reasons why this is not a journal is, it’s not that that’s Richard’s writing a journal journal. Likely as, as we learned, he would write notes, his notes probably look like this. This is a little cleaner. Ok. It’s more legible. You can read every word. Sometimes you got a strain because you gotta know how he writes.
[1:49:32] Michelle: You know, I’m gonna say, I think that the notes of Joseph’s journal would be even worse because when you’re writing your own journal, you can at least do it when you have time. You can sit down and think
[1:49:41] Jeremy Hoop: the
[1:49:42] Michelle: fly he’s following him. He’s not. Yeah. So I think that that would have been even messier. This
[1:49:46] Jeremy Hoop: is a letter in 1846 to the camp of Israel. It’s much cleaner. It’s uh much more orderly. It’s still a little, it’s, you know, it’s similar to this. Ok. And this is uh from the, the history draft. Same thing. This is his level of where he’s getting pretty good. And this, um, is a letter to Thomas Ford where it’s much cleaner. Ok. So he has the ability to write pretty clean. Ok? And then
[1:50:10] Michelle: in case anyone’s gonna say, I hope people are looking at the dates at the bottom in case anyone’s gonna be like, well, they learned to write better like it was a progress over time like a child in high handwriting class. No, this is merely about how important or how finished on, on which cop which, which form of writing they’re using for what purpose this
[1:50:28] Jeremy Hoop: is about the best Richards gets. And this happens to be a copy of the supposed July 12th, 1843 Revelation on Celestial Marriage. And I wonder if anyone looking at this realizes the significance of what I just said that there happens to be a copy of the July 12th, 1843 Revelation on Celestial Marriage in Richard’s handwriting. We’re not gonna take time to go through this. We’re gonna do that later because it plays in later in another episode. But just let that ring around in your head. Let
[1:51:01] Michelle: me just make this point quickly because it was just in my last episode that I mentioned this, that I just mentioned it. But from he’s own copy, the original was destroyed after two days, which begs the question of what exactly Hiram read and went across the street to get to read. Right. But no one seems bothered by that but me. But anyway, and then he says that no one knew about the secret um Bishop Whitney copy that Kingsbury made. So the fact that Willard Richards has a copy is highly,
[1:51:31] Jeremy Hoop: is just Bananas Bonkers. Where in Tarnation did this thing come from? And when was it written? Uh by the way, Brian Hales. Brian Hales thinks this was written in 1843 and the church thinks it was at some
[1:51:44] Michelle: point. He says,
[1:51:46] Jeremy Hoop: well, he said, he said, he says, he, he, he’s got in a document, he wrote 1843. And the church also says 1846 when we, I don’t know, but this one exists, we’ll come back to that later. Now, Joseph
[1:51:58] Michelle: Kingsbury, it is troubling. I should say it’s not troubling to us. It’s troubling, troubling to that narrative. It doesn’t fit, they haven’t
[1:52:07] Jeremy Hoop: Lucy, you got to do so. You’ve got uh Joseph Kingsbury in 1859 and a letter that he’s writing, this is sloppy as can be. It’s to Brigham Young and this is a letter to Brigham Young. Uh then you’ve got a day book that he kept in Joseph Smith’s store, by the way, this is why he gets into the picture because he worked for Newell Whitney. He was a clerk for Newell Whitney who kept the, the store that Joseph Smith owned. Ok. And you can see it’s a little cleaner but it’s still pretty sloppy. Then from his personal history, you can read every word much cleaner and then you copy, you compare that to the infamous revelation on Celestial Marriage. July 12th, 1843. The thing we mentioned that’s beautiful. He can write with a beautiful pen. OK? And you can read every
[1:52:51] Michelle: word. Now, one thing I’m just assuming is that writing this beautifully takes longer than the sloppy chicken
[1:52:59] Jeremy Hoop: scratches. We don’t have time to go into that. But absolutely, because that plays into the narrative we’re going to discuss in part four. Absolutely. That’s, that’s, that’s to come. So with each scribe, the penmanship improves according to the importance of the document. OK? With every scribe, it improves with the importance of the document. Just keep that in mind. The contemporaneous journals, journals and minutes are markedly different from the more official pristine and clean writing from each one of these clerks and my computer is going a little slow. So this is popping up a little, a little bit clunky. So you get the point. This is a pattern shown over and over again by each clerk. So do Cla Clayton’s writings tell a similar story. Well, here’s his journal Ok, this is, it’s really hard to read him really, really hard. That’s his Manchester journal. This is the rough council of 50 minutes in 1846. It, you can read it a little more but it’s still kind of rough. Ok. Then you have other minutes. This is a little cleaner. Ok. This is a, more of a cleaned up copy. But boy, some of his words are hard to, you have to really get used to, to, to reading Clayton in this kind of hand. Then you’ve got his April 1844 conference minutes. By the way, he doesn’t record hiram sermon in this. In this, I think as we may have mentioned, he doesn’t record this at all. But this is his recording of those uh sermons. This is um I believe that where the king fet discourse comes from. Ok. And, and Clayton has his own copy of it. And then the trustee’s land book, you see his writings, Much Cleaner in the trustee’s land book. This is an official capacity clerk writing he’s doing this for uh in as the um the working for the trustee and trust, which is Joseph Smith. Ok. These
[1:54:48] Michelle: are records that are important,
[1:54:49] Jeremy Hoop: recording land deeds and all kinds of things. OK. Land transactions. It’s a letter to James Arlington in 1842. This is quite, this is quite nice. He’s not quite the penman of the others, but he can write really cleanly and and um really legibly and in a, in a in a lovely hand, I shall say
[1:55:08] Michelle: his writing cleans up nicely,
[1:55:10] Jeremy Hoop: right? And in, in the book of the Law of the Lord, this is nothing like Bullock, ok? He’s not nearly as gifted as Bullock, but this is the book of the Law of the Lord. It’s very clean. Every word is legible, ok? This is about the, this is, this is the zenith for him. This is as good as it gets. So as you can see Williams penmanship, just like the other scribes improves with the importance of every document that he’s writing a quick review of the Council of 50 records. And what we’ve learned about William’s pattern. Number one, the Council of 50 minutes are written in the same type of book as his navoo journals. Clayton would take rough minutes at the meetings. Then he would reconstruct the brief accounts of these meetings using minutes, his journal memory and possibly other documents, a comparison between the original minutes and the copy in the record book reveals that Clayton would make a, a number of changes to the minutes from the originals to the fair copy, adding or deleting words and phrases in an attempt to clarify and polish the text and his uh record keeping went through three stages. First rough minutes, second, a loose copy to be read at a meeting and then third, he would make a fair copy. And so what’s a fair copy.
[1:56:19] Michelle: Um, Jerry referring back to what you, to your legal requirements for a diary to be entered. I’m just, again, like, nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Right. Ok. It
[1:56:31] Jeremy Hoop: must be, it must have been done in the, in the regular business of the day and in a journal setting that’s, you’re writing every day, it must be authentic and it must be, um, uh, you can’t impeach the person who is writing it, meaning they’re recording things accurately with knowledge. OK. And so in this setting, if he’s taking stuff from a meeting and he’s embellishing, this is just the council 50 record where there’s probably not that much as, it’s probably innocuous my guess. I don’t know but because we can’t see all the original minutes, but I don’t know why he would have a AAA need to embellish those records. However, a fair copy then in this definition, according to Miriam is a neat and exact copy, especially of a corrected draft. Cambridge says it’s the final corrected copy of a uh of a piece of a written work. Collins says it’s an exact copy of a document manuscript after final corrections. So a fair copy is not precisely an exact copy. It’s an edited copy. OK?
[1:57:30] Michelle: It’s, it’s, I think what is fair to say is it’s the final draft, you’ve done all of your draft work and this is the finished version.
[1:57:38] Jeremy Hoop: Perfect. Perfect. And, and for publication for keeping a record for posterity or something of that nature. OK. This is, these are pages from volume one of the Council of 50. Volume two of the Council of 50. Volume three of the Council of 50. If you flip through the pages you see, it’s, it’s exactly like this. Every page. Well, you know, there’s some, there’s some scribbles here and there, there’s a little things that some things that are crossed out and written over, but it’s very rare and it’s very clean. It’s a, it’s a pristine record of the events of the council of 50.
[1:58:14] Michelle: So making it obvious that it wasn’t kept contemporaneously correct. And
[1:58:19] Jeremy Hoop: so when you look at his contemporaneous minutes or his actual journal versus the Council of 50 you can see the distinction with what he’s doing. And it’s very clear when he’s keeping a contemporaneous record versus when he’s doing what we, we’d call a fair copy. The now the Council of 50 is what Brigham Young used to claim his authority. Let that sink in. Brigham uses this book or these records to claim the authority of the 12 because it’s in this record that Brigham claims that Joseph rolled off the keys onto the 12. That’s actually not what happened. OK. That’s a long subject. Too much to go into here. But he uses this, this council, the council of 50 to claim that’s where the 12 gets the keys from Joseph. OK. That’s a long story. We, that’s for another day. However, Clayton made this record, remember this, without anyone’s knowledge, Clayton held on to these records for two whole years and then finally handed them to Brigham Young in 1847 after just immediately after his life is being threatened by Brigham Young. And these are a sorry by Jose Est out. Thank you a neat clean fair copy of other minutes having been edited and corrected in their final form. So what’s the significance of William’s creation of the Council of 50 Minutes? Well, one other thing to, to, to note as I’ve mentioned, the Council of 50 Minutes, the NAVOO journals and Willard Richards journals are all, they’re, it’s oddly, they all happen to be the same size. I don’t think that’s that big a deal, but it’s just really interesting that two of the primary clerks in this whole thing are using the exact same volumes to create a narrative. OK? Or to create something. All right.
[2:00:10] Michelle: So these are different than all of their other journals. OK. And these are the special ones that are, that are specifically creating the narrative that is NN
[2:00:17] Jeremy Hoop: journals are in are in the exact same type of volume as the books you see on your screen.
[2:00:21] Michelle: OK.
[2:00:23] Jeremy Hoop: The same exact size there are these little books he’s using to create a uh a fair copy. Is there evidence that William followed the same pattern for the NAVOO journal? OK. James Allen says the following Clayton made the first entry in his three NAVOO journals, November 27th, 1842. It’s possible even probable that Clayton kept some kind of record that’s lost. We’ve read that. Now, Robert Filler up says Clayton probably kept a quote, private book or quote record or private record. While in NAVOO, the original is not known to exist but copies of quote extracts from William Clayton’s private book do exist. See the note and the date et cetera, et cetera. And Alan says this, the first record recorded presentation of this idea uh was to the members of the Corm of the 12 on June 27th, 1839. As they were preparing for their important mission to England. Apparently, Joseph taught it somewhere. He’s talking about detecting spirits. OK. There’s this idea that uh if you give your hand, AAA true spirit will not offer their hand to you. A devil will try to shake your hand, et cetera. OK. Apparently Joseph taught it somewhere regularly. After that. It was first published as a revelation in Deseret News. It was first um on April 23rd, 1856 and an end in 1876 it was placed in the Doctrine and covenants as section 129.
[2:01:46] Michelle: OK. Do we have it earlier than 1856?
[2:01:49] Jeremy Hoop: Um No, no, not, not, not published earlier than 1856. OK. But references to Joseph teaching this doctrine are found in August 8th 1839 and in December 1840 in March 21st in 1841 the December 1840 reference is in a curious source titled extracts from William Clayton’s private book. The original private book is not available for research. A photocopy of the extracts is available in the Scott G Kenny research collection. J Willard Marriott library blah blah, blah, the Nuttle pa uh uh you John Nuttle also made excerpts from Clayton’s private book, but these are incomplete. So now I that might be a little confusing but section 129 of the Doctrine and Covenants was written from the extracts that John Nuttall makes. OK. Uh of William Clayton’s private book, we don’t have this private book. It doesn’t exist but
[2:02:52] Michelle: is it OK? It it’s it does, it’s not just not available for research. It’s
[2:02:56] Jeremy Hoop: been no one knows where it is that doesn’t mean the church doesn’t have it, but it’s not known to exist. OK.
[2:03:03] Michelle: So this is not any of his journals. This
[2:03:06] Jeremy Hoop: is another, this is another journal. This would be, this would be called a journal. OK. Or at least a at least a record book in which Clayton inscribes a bunch of stuff. And one of those things is this teaching that makes its way into the Doctrine and covenants from Clayton’s private book. Mind you. OK.
[2:03:28] Michelle: And, and what are the dates of this book? Do we know that we don’t
[2:03:31] Jeremy Hoop: know anything about it? All we know is what John Nuttle, John Nuttall later, he’s, he’s in the historian’s office, makes extracts from it, ok? And those extracts wind their way into the doctrine and covenants. Ok. So this is what we know about those extracts more on that extracts from William Clayton’s private book is a handwrit manuscript located in the papers of John Nuttall at Brigham Young University Nuttall’s source was apparently a private journal kept by Clayton in which he recorded excerpts from several sermons of Joseph Smith. The extracts are interesting but they say nothing specific about Clayton. Moreover, whether Clayton actually heard these sermons or whether he copied them from someone else’s transcription is unclear. One short titled quote a key by Joseph Smith December 1840. So we don’t know if he’s writing it on the day or if he’s recording it later deals with quote, the key by which someone may determine whether a messenger is a spirit of God is a spirit from God or from the devil sev uh On 9th February 1843 Clayton was with the prophet in Nauvoo when he repeated the same instructions as recorded in the Doctrine. Covenants 1 29 4 through nine. That passage is actually a word for word duplication except for one minor difference of Clayton’s NAVOO journal entry for that date. This entry was the source for the official transcription when it was prepared for the Doctrine and covenants, the editor of an intimate chronicle could have known this. OK. So what he’s saying is there’s this other book we don’t know it to exist. John Nuttall much later records extracts from Clayton’s private book. One of the things he records is this interesting teaching that Joseph apparently taught on more than one occasion where if you, you can detect it, uh one spirit from another, you can detect a true
[2:05:14] Michelle: spirit from going to like acknowledge here. This is a key I’ve never needed to use. I, I would be interested to know if anyone has found this to be a useful, I mean, I don’t know if it’s from Joseph Smith or not, but in any case,
[2:05:30] Jeremy Hoop: I don’t, I, I,
[2:05:33] Michelle: I have other ways of knowing what, what spirits
[2:05:37] Jeremy Hoop: are frankly. His teaching, his, his, his actual verified sermon or write writing called Try the Spirits is far more instructive in my view than just holding out your hand, which teaches you the way to discern the message of true and false messengers. So, um
[2:05:56] Michelle: you know what, if you’ll send me that link, I’ll include it because
[2:05:59] Jeremy Hoop: people try the spirits. Uh try the spirits. I don’t know. It’s the JSP has it. Um That’s an actual verified teaching by Joseph Smith that was never canonized by the LDS church. So, but it’s a very important, it
[2:06:12] Michelle: might be a little more useful that’s
[2:06:15] Jeremy Hoop: really, really important. But nonetheless, what you find is you have an original cop uh uh writing a recording of this in an earlier book that we don’t have John Nuttall has an extract. But then we also have a recording in Clayton’s journal of apparently the same thing. Did he use the extract to reconstruct? The journal? Was he really with the prophet on the day? Don’t know. But the fact exists,
[2:06:41] Michelle: could the private book be one of those draft copies? Like level two? Oh, we don’t know any, we we
[2:06:47] Jeremy Hoop: can’t examine it. But the, but the fact exists, there was another record that Clayton kept that we don’t have. So when we say Clayton’s quote journal, what, what people typically think when you, they think your journal, I think this is the, this is the book that I re record my notes, my thoughts, my feelings, my experiences. OK? And usually when someone has a journal, they’re not, they’re not recording four journals simultaneously for different purposes. Maybe, I mean, maybe you might, might have a spiritual thoughts journal, you might have a daily activities journal. I don’t know, you might have salacious details journal. I don’t know, but typically people aren’t doing that kind of thing. OK? He has this book, we don’t know what the time frame that it covers, but we know that it did or does exist. OK. So, and we get
[2:07:35] Michelle: from it. So that’s good for everyone to know that. I mean, I think many people know that 132 isn’t the only questionable late entry into Doctrine covenant it’s useful to check everything that was added in 1876 and try to discern where they came from.
[2:07:51] Jeremy Hoop: It’s even more than that there. The doc covenants has lots of interesting things that need to be investigated, I think. And, and that’s for other people for another day to talk about. So, the fact that this exists is a very important uh piece of this puzzle. Does it still exist? Does the ch is it still in the possession of the church? Are there any other records that Clayton has that the that the church is, is withholding? Ok. If so the church should release them immediately if they do. Ok. Now, verifiably, Clayton used rough minutes letters, his memory and other documents to create the council of 50 records. Did Clayton use a similar process to create the journals given what we’ve exposed about these journals given? Um what there wasn’t that there wasn’t, is a private book, a private journal. What are the chances the journals were recorded contemporaneously? Now, remember um James Allen’s warning, the journals are, are are difficult to follow. They don’t follow a chronological order. They’re problematic. Scholars should be very wary. OK. Remember that warning. Remember that William Clayton’s pen penmanship improves with the importance of the document. If we’re looking at his Manchester journal versus his Council of 50 minutes, we’re looking at page after page after page of
[2:09:11] Michelle: all of these. We’re comparing the the rough draft, the distemper to the more finished draft. Well,
[2:09:16] Jeremy Hoop: on the left, what you see is his Manchester journal, his actual journal. He’s doing a real journal versus when he’s writing a fair copy. OK. Can I just ask you one other question?
[2:09:27] Michelle: Does a fair, do his fair copies ever include things about Raisins or Ginger lozenges?
[2:09:35] Jeremy Hoop: And she gave me 22 pence and a peck on the cheek.
[2:09:39] Michelle: I’m just curious if he’s, he’s a little more careful, right? It’s, it’s the difference between like I mentioned before. That was it in this recording that I talked about the 13 year old journal or is that what we went back and did that delete that
[2:09:51] Jeremy Hoop: now to the other side would say, well, he’s very, he’s very honest about stuff that he does in his Nauvoo. Sure, because he doesn’t see any problem with it. He doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong. He just, he has, he, he is utterly clueless about his own situation and station. And so, well, it’s,
[2:10:13] Michelle: it’s similar to the um affidavits written in Utah by these older women. Now, what they thought they were, this was in a context, I I’m trying to get people to understand this was in a context context where sacrifice for the principle was the highest good. So the greater sacrifice you made the more faithful you were, they weren’t writing these things, say Joseph Smith was bad. They were writing them saying, look at the sacrifice I made for the principle, with this kind of lack of awareness of how later people would read that and what that would say about Joseph Smith. So it’s a similar thing that you have to get into their mindset. Like Clayton wasn’t being honest, he was being faithful to what he was doing. Well,
[2:10:55] Jeremy Hoop: when I say honesty, when he’s recording things about himself in his novel journal, I think he’s being perfectly honest about himself. Absolutely. And so as we look at the things he records contemporaneously with the things he records officially, we can see it. It’s very, very different from his conference minutes to his council of 50 records. On the left side, you see a letter, this becomes more official to his council. This is, this is where it’s similar, an official letter, an official document and then another official letter in the official document and then the book of the Law of the Lord. This is where it’s most close. OK? The the the the level of uh of clean penmanship, the way the writing is done. Um the official nature of the document, that’s it parallels the book of the Law of the Lord. The council of 50 record does.
[2:11:46] Michelle: So on the left, I’m seeing the book of the Law of the Lord or on the left. I’m seeing the council of 50 on the right, I’m
[2:11:52] Jeremy Hoop: seeing no, on the left, you’re seeing the book of the Law of the Lord, the big one. That’s the big book. And on the right, you’re seeing the Council of 50 record.
[2:12:00] Michelle: Ok. Ok. And they both look uh huh. Fair. They both look like fair copies.
[2:12:05] Jeremy Hoop: They, they are both fair copies. Absolutely. And so that pattern through the council of 50 record applies. It’s, it’s an official document on the right hand side as opposed to a contemporaneous Conte contemporaneously recorded document. Now, where would Clayton’s journal fall? So can a comparison help us understand? So let’s take a look. Let’s compare the Council of 50 record with actual pages from his actual journal side by side. And on one side, you have the NAVOO journal, there’s an actual page from the NAVOO journal in front of you and on the other side, you have a page from the Council of 50 record. Now, people seeing this go, what’s the big deal? Well, take a look, look and see if you can tell the difference. I have switched them up and so you can see if you can figure it out. One is one and one is the other, which one would be the NAU journal and which one would be the council of 50 record.
[2:13:03] Michelle: Those are pretty clean. I can’t see a journal there, especially if you had it up next to his rough stuff. No, no, no, you can’t tell.
[2:13:12] Jeremy Hoop: OK, one is the Council of 51 is the nuur and there are page after page after page like this. But can you, can you distinguish which one is a contemporaneous record from which one is a fair and clean copy? I defy any of the historians to explain this away to explain it away.
[2:13:31] Michelle: Like when these are both fair copies,
[2:13:35] Jeremy Hoop: they’re both clean pristine and they’re, they’re, and by the way, remember they’re produced in the exact type of volume. OK. Remember when Clayton starts recording the Council of 50 record, it’s shortly after Joseph dies. And I think that gives us a clue as to when he likely started copying his nau journal because this is a copy folks, this is a copy, this is not a journal. You are seeing pages from his journal on each, but these are the side by sides with the Council of 50 record. And what you can see is you cannot tell the difference. If you don’t know what you’re reading, you do not know which one comes from which and I defy any of the historians to, to tell me what this is about. OK. OK.
[2:14:17] Michelle: So let me just let me just make sure I’m on, on, on, on up with you right now. The Council of 50 is his best work. It’s his most pristine like scripture keeping type
[2:14:28] Jeremy Hoop: it. It lines up with it lines up with his best work with his, with the most official letters with the book of the Law of the Lord. It’s clean like that. He’s not a great Penman. He’s not, he’s not, he’s not amazing, but this is the best that he gets right here.
[2:14:41] Michelle: And then we have his journal or his, his contemporaneous, which are an absolute mess, right? And then also what I wanted to point what I want would, would be curious to investigate are a couple of things during Joseph’s life. He was busy, he was keeping him well. He was, he was doing a million things after Joseph’s death is when he was finalizing his records for the council of 50 minutes and that’s recorded often. So you are saying the most likely scenario you can see is that he was doing both of these in a similar time period after Joseph, I
[2:15:11] Jeremy Hoop: believe that he starts recording his Nuvo journal at the same time or sometime close to when he’s recording the Council of 50 minutes for a purpose as we will see here shortly. So on these pages here on the left, you see this is the Council of 50 record on the right. You see his nuvo journal, the page, this is one page. And fortunately, I know if you know what you’re looking at in the Joseph Smith papers, you can find references um in various things they just leak out. II I found these because I was looking up at one of Joseph’s discourses. And under if you know, if you’ve looked at the Joseph Smith papers, they have a section called additional versions and under additional versions, they’ll list who else recorded uh the discourse or that event. And in a number of cases like December 21st, 1842 or January 22nd, 1843 you’ll notice you can see these are from the William Clayton Journal. OK. So they, they’re there, they, they buried them. They’re hard to find. But if you search for them, you can find, I found 57 there might be more but 57 actual pages on the Joseph Smith papers. Well, II, I noticed it once and I thought, are you kidding me? This is the, the journal, no one’s seen because previous to that, the only page that I’d ever seen was this page that has a kinder Kinderhook played on it and I’ll show that here in a second, but I could not believe that they had inadvertently put 57 pages here under these sections as you can see. And I’m gonna show you the actual pages. I want you guys to see these pages. So you can see, I have a representation of pages from all three volumes of the journal, from the, from that nuvo period. And so they represent different spans in the journal. So it’s not from one little chunk, it’s from the entire span of the whole thing. So you can tell that he’s consistently recording this in the exact same way that he recorded his council of 50 minutes. It is the same type of work as he did with the Council of 50 minutes. All of these are right in the Joseph Smith papers.
[2:17:18] Michelle: Absolutely. Another thing I’m not seeing and you can correct me, but I’m not seeing blank lines and blank pages, which that was in the middle version, right? We have the sloppy notes. Then the middle version. This is the finalized version without the empty, the empty pages to add. That’s another huge
[2:17:35] Jeremy Hoop: evidence. 100%. He’s not doing what he and Richards are so want to do and, and, and uh and by the way, um he doesn’t have blank spaces or pages in his, in his Manchester journal either. But that one is sloppy. The, the words are smooshy. There, there’s lines on the page, there’s edits, there’s all kind of like Joseph’s
[2:17:55] Michelle: earlier stripes. It’s the, it’s a contemporaneous that’s not in, that’s not premeditated. So it
[2:18:02] Jeremy Hoop: doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit either the contemporaneous journal or a draft. This is a, this is almost a finished work for him. OK. So 22 pages from the journal,
[2:18:13] Michelle: everybody like please tell me that you are getting this. This is so huge because it’s not just your opinion you are showing right here. Answer this, explain this. There’s the pattern we have it all. This is the finalized, this is the version to turn into the history. Like this is kind of like the church history version when it’s finally after the things have been cut out after all of the decisions have been made. This is amazing. OK, keep going. I, I just want to really let that settle for people what it is that you’re showing us here.
[2:18:46] Jeremy Hoop: Absolutely. So as we’re scrolling through these, just take a look at each page from 27 28 29 pages in the forties pages in the fifties. These are throughout the journal scattered throughout. OK. The, the Joseph Smith papers has given us sections from various parts of the journal, but we can see it’s consistent. This is all book one. OK? And every single page is like this, every page is clean and pristine just like the Council of 50 record. It all has the exact same features that we saw with the Council of 50 record. And I, by the way, I invite you to go to the Joseph Smith papers. Download the Council of 50 record. Also just search William Clayton. You will find these. If you know how to search for them, they’re, they’re not hidden, they’re, they’re not, they’re not rather they are, they are hidden in plain sight. Let’s put it that way. I don’t think they, I don’t think they really want to have these out there, but they put them out there, right? Because these, these pages have to do with important sermons that Joseph gave or certain things. Now these pages here, this is from book two. OK. This is what I, what I like to call the gap book. Ok. And we’ll come back to that gap book and how important that is. But again, you see exactly the same thing. Page 1314, 15, page 16 and 18. By the way, those of you who are saying, oh, so big deal. So it’s perfect. Some people write Ruly while you go, you show me your journal, show me the journal of the, of the most meticulous um uh teenage girl who has beautiful handwriting. It still doesn’t look like
[2:20:18] Michelle: this. Also. Some days it’s in a purple pen. Some days you’re really quick and tired. Some days you’re this, you cannot see where a page where a day stops and starts. He’s
[2:20:29] Jeremy Hoop: using the same pen for large sections of this, which means he’s sitting at a desk and he’s taking other documents and he’s compiling them into a single record.
[2:20:39] Michelle: Well, he’s already done. He’s already done his middling copy, whatever his draft copy with the blank lines. And he’s already made all of his notes. This is the final version and he’s already, it’s written before. He’s copying it
[2:20:51] Jeremy Hoop: in a private book or another journal or minutes he’s taking from meetings or a letter that he saw or he’s using those other things just like he did the Council of 50 to create this.
[2:21:04] Michelle: This brings up another challenge which is him trading back and forth between books. It like that’s a really interesting question
[2:21:13] Jeremy Hoop: as a more suspense as Murdoch would say, hold on to your butts. So from uh it was that Lethal Weapon, I can’t remember. No, I don’t remember the movie, but this is Journal Three. This is the loose little papers that were in, in volume one. We have all 14 of these. Now, the, the, the papers are distressed and colored because of weathering because it doesn’t have a cover. But you’ll notice it’s exactly the same. This is the narrative about Joseph’s last uh the nine days previous to Carthage. Ok. It’s a, it’s, it’s an official, it’s like an official record, you know, of the events. And so he’s done the exact same thing.
[2:21:55] Michelle: These are the nine days before Carthage. That’s really interesting
[2:21:59] Jeremy Hoop: in their very, very important stuff. And, and again, the Joseph Smith paper says it’s unclear as to whether Joseph authorized this or not. Ok, Joseph was
[2:22:09] Michelle: dead. Joseph was dead long before this was done. Ok. So
[2:22:14] Jeremy Hoop: these 57 random pages that we looked at from all three volumes, they span the length of the entire work and they provide a fair representation of the nature of the entire record. Remember Clayton’s NOVO journals are the same size as the Council of 50 Richards memo books and every single page like the Council of 50 record is written neatly and appears to be a clean fair copy on the top. You see the Council of 50 on the bottom, you see pages from his journals. Remember Clayton’s missing private journal and his pattern of copying rough notes into clean records. The 57 pages reveal that there are also interesting edits at different points in the journal. So for example, on page 65 it has these little notes written in pencil. He on the day he wrote do blank, do blank, but then he writes notes. OK? On page 71 he also related the following dream. He writes, he also related his dream, whatever. He’s clarifying the meaning in a subsequent edit. On page 72 he’s, he’s drawing lines. You’ll notice in the, in the
[2:23:29] Michelle: history. Let me ask you, we don’t know for sure that Clayton did this.
[2:23:34] Jeremy Hoop: We have no idea. Well, that’s Clayton’s hand, that’s Clayton’s handwriting above that, that looks to be his handwriting. OK? Um So he, he, he clarifies, he also related his dream of 10 March. So he adds a date in there on this page. You see a line through the page in the, in the history draft for the church. You’ll notice they’ll put lines through pages when they’ve gone through and they’ve done their edit for that page or they’ve or they’ve checked it, you know, we’re done with this page. So we’re gonna put a line through it. OK? Um And, and this other page, there’s more simple little notes clarifying um the words uh we will call on the Saints to defend probably all the Western territory, OK? Instead of call on your call on you to defend probably the western territory, he’s making edits to even the pristine copy, which is interesting. Do you go back and do you edit your own journal? Yeah. Do you do that? I mean, maybe, maybe you do. But this
[2:24:29] Michelle: is like I said, if I looked at my 13 year old journal, right? If I made a new copy of like if, when I wrote a later version, that 13 year old journal would not be included as it went. And in
[2:24:41] Jeremy Hoop: your journal, would you make a reference that says see page 82? No,
[2:24:46] Michelle: no. Unless it was no, no. It’s bizarre.
[2:24:49] Jeremy Hoop: Why would you do that? Unless this is a document used to create something else which we will see here in a second. Now, why would there be edits in the journal? OK. Now this is what’s called what they call proof that the journals contemporaneous. There’s a page in the journal where Clayton traces something called a Kinderhook plate. If you’re not familiar with that story, go google it, you’ll figure it out. But it’s, it’s plates that
[2:25:16] Michelle: was given to Joseph. Yeah,
[2:25:18] Jeremy Hoop: supposedly um uh made Joseph look bad. OK. The question is, did Clayton trace this on the day on May 1st 1843 as it says in the journal, the antagonist, the apologists both agree that this is absolute proof that the journals contemporaneous. OK. First, I wanna read really quickly what Allen writes about this. So you understand that there’s some problems with this recording of this entry in Clayton’s journal. And boy, I love Alan, I just love him because he inadvertently admits stuff that really helps us. Some of the entries in the history based on Clayton’s journal reveal the potential problems with this kind of history. The story, by the way, he, what he’s referencing is Clay using Clayton’s journal to construct Joseph Smith’s history. OK. Which we will see more of later. OK. We’re gonna see more about that later. Some of the entries in the history. That’s Joseph Smith’s history based on Clayton’s journal reveal the potential problems with this kind of history. The story of the infamous Kinderhook plates is an example on May 1st 1843 Clayton recorded the following and then he records, I’ve seen six brass plates, et cetera, et cetera. I’m not gonna read the whole thing, the same, the same entry with some slight modifications appeared in the history as follows. OK? I won’t read that either just to save time, but they, they record basically, they use Clayton’s journal as the, the base text for the history. OK. That’s in Joseph’s history. The problem here is that the Kinderhook plates were a hoax and because we know this, the entry seems to show that Joseph Smith was hopelessly duped. It must be noted. However, that in his diary, Clayton did not quote Joseph directly. He only reported what he thought was happening. Whether Joseph actually told Clayton that he had translated the plates or whether Clayton was simply reporting what he had heard from a variety of sources is not clear. The latter appears to be the case, especially when one realizes that Clayton’s account contains several inaccuracies. The so-called discovery took place in Pike County, not Adams County and there was no skeleton with the plates, only some bones. Further, William Clayton’s account is not consistent with similar account by Parley P. Pratt, which was also probably attained by hearsay rather than from the prophet himself. There’s no evidence of any direct statement by Joseph Smith about the authenticity of the plates and no evidence that he ever obtained attempted a translation. As historian Stanley B. Kimball has demonstrated all kinds of stories about the plates were circulating, but Joseph did not get involved with the plates at all. What is clear is simply the unfortunate entry got into the history before any of its editors knew the truth. Now, I don’t want to get into a discussion today about the Kinderhook plates. That’s another subject entirely. However, I just want to point out what Alan notes that there’s trouble with the story. And unfortunately, part of the trouble is Clayton himself and the fact that Clayton re recorded some erroneous things that then got uh trusted to be in the official history. Ok. That’s number one, Clayton’s own entry in the Kinderhook plate is troubling number two is what about Brigham Young who also made a tracing or sketch of the same thing? However, in his journal, there’s a problem. He didn’t make the sketch on the day, but the date he puts is on May 3rd, 1843. Now, look at the d this is a little strange. These are pages from his actual journal, but his journal is a little weird because he doesn’t always kind of like Clayton doesn’t always record things exactly. Chronologically. Sometimes he’ll be in 1843 and another entry, he’ll record something that was said in 1841. Like he’ll go back
[2:28:51] Michelle: reminiscences and
[2:28:53] Jeremy Hoop: that this is not nefarious. This is just like he, you’ll have a, um you’ll have a revelation. He writes a revelation that happened in 18 thirties from Joseph Smith after he’s been recording things in 1843. So it’s a little strange. Well, in this section here in August 1018 43 he writes some things. It’s hard to read. But he’s, uh you know, he’s with somebody Elizabeth between five or six, blah, blah, blah. Then the very next page he’s recording something that supposedly happened three months earlier. And that’s the page that has the Kinderhook plate tracing on it. And then the very next page after that, we’re back to October of 1843. And then we’re the very page after that, we’re in April of 1844. It’s almost like he’s recording smatterings of things. I don’t know exactly why it doesn’t seem like a completely contemporaneous journal where you’re recording daily. But the point of this is he, it’s very possible. In fact, most likely he did not record that on May 3rd, 1843. What he did was he maybe lifted that from another journal or he somehow traced that which is identical to what Clayton traces. Ok. But he didn’t do it on the day. So does that mean that Clayton? It’s certain that Clayton recorded his on the day? Well, the problem is Clayton had access to papers. Go ahead.
[2:30:21] Michelle: Well, the thing that just drives me crazy and you maybe are gonna get to this. But from the time you very first showed it, what I think is so dumb is that someone recording something after, doesn’t prove that it was contemporary. I mean, like the fact that Clayton included a contempt, a Kinder Hut plate in a later production does not prove that it was an earlier production. It would be I I should go the other direction. It would only prove anything if he included the Kinder Hut plate before it was available. Do you know what I’m like? That’s, I guess what I’m saying is to, to include the Kinderhook plate later does not prove that it was earlier when he had seen the Kinderhook plate. That’s so I I’m not explaining it. Well, maybe you can explain it better, but it’s so obvious to
[2:31:04] Jeremy Hoop: me. Well, on the day he says he records it, which is two days before Brigham supposedly records his. But remember Brigham’s is not on the day Brigham’s is sometime between August of 1843 and October of 1843. You
[2:31:17] Michelle: know, everyone just opens the journal wherever and
[2:31:20] Jeremy Hoop: randomly and then fills in around it. Exactly. With Clayton the look, I can’t prove when he wrote this. I don’t know when he wrote it. Exactly. I have a, I have a, I have an idea of when he wrote it, but I don’t know exactly when he wrote this particular page. But he could have written a long time after because we have newspaper articles from which he could have made a sketch or he could have cut them out and traced around them because those newspaper articles were made from something called, they’re called woodcuts. We also had the woodcuts available, apparently the same person who made the wood cuts for the book of Abraham and printed them in the newspaper. Those are actually, um, they cut the images out of wood and they, and they make etchings say so that you can then put ink on them and put them on a page. And then you have, uh, you have the image, that’s what these, what you’re seeing in these newspapers are made from wood cuts. They were made by a guy named Ruben Headlock. And apparently Joseph employed him to make the wood cuts of the book of Abraham or also employed him to make the wood cuts of these Kinderhook plates. They got printed in the Times in uh sorry, the navoo neighbor, I believe it was, they got printed in the prophet. So Clayton had access to something those, by the way, the plates were around till the civil war. So they were available, they were around.
[2:32:33] Michelle: We already know that Clayton was using his notes that he took, he could have made a note of it from anything at any time and included it in his later copy. That’s what I’m saying. Like it goes, it, that is the dumbest claim to say, look, it includes something that he had 10 years before. That proves that he made it 10 years before. That’s so I, I can’t, neither
[2:32:55] Jeremy Hoop: of us are proving, neither of us are proving how or when he did it. And that’s not the point. The point is they cannot say that this is proof that it was contemporaneous because it absolutely could have been done after the fact, right? The point is that it does,
[2:33:09] Michelle: they are completely wrong in saying that that proves that it was written that that is laughably silly.
[2:33:17] Jeremy Hoop: So we can, so I think we can dispense with this. Uh Jacob Vidrine, if you’re watching, you can no longer claim that this is contemporaneous
[2:33:27] Michelle: and real and all of them.
[2:33:30] Jeremy Hoop: And uh if, if you want to see Brigham’s journal, it’s available, just go look at it.
[2:33:36] Michelle: So and do you know what the fact that this is what they have as proof? It shows us how silly this entire argument is. They keep saying, why do we even have to discuss this? It’s so obvious. I think no, the
[2:33:49] Jeremy Hoop: table, this is why we have to discuss this.
[2:33:52] Michelle: The the tables have now turned where we should say, why do we even have to discuss your stupid claims? This is so stupid.
[2:34:00] Jeremy Hoop: Why, why do we have to dignify? Why do we have to dignify your claims that it’s contemporaneous? This is not, this is absolutely not contemporaneous. And for you to say so is, is, well, it’s in the face of evidence, contrary to your claims, it should
[2:34:14] Michelle: be embarrassing. And at some point, it will be, I have a feeling I know which arguments will age better than others.
[2:34:21] Jeremy Hoop: So I think we can, can we can definitively say this. You, you cannot say it’s contemporaneous. I believe you can say it’s not contemporaneous, but you certainly cannot say it is contemporaneous. We also know there’s a private record where the heck is that thing. And also finally, let’s listen to James Allen’s additional warning about the content of what is in the Inanimate chronicle. The excerpts from E Hat’s notes. He says the following, after having said scholars should be very wary. He says the result so far as an intimate chronicle is concerned is an abridgment that leaves the worst kind of imbalance. It is not a scholarly abridgement based on a consistent rationale concerning what is important enough to include or insignificant enough to leave out. For example, e hat’s excerpts reveal some problems between Joseph and Emma. But the original journals show with equal clarity that the two were very close and very much in love. Clayton saw the problems, but he also saw the prophet and his wife working together for a common cause in a variety of ways. The excerpts largely obscure that fact. Then he goes through and he gives an example. I won’t read it. He gives a beautiful example from the journals of how that looked to, to William Clayton. Even my own analysis of the E hat hat excerpts show that they are reasonably accurate transcriptions of the original Smith’s reproduction. Moreover was generally faithful to the EHA material. Nevertheless, the excerpts are highly selective. They usually include only a portion of a daily entry and they do not constitute more than about 25% of the whole for these reasons. I felt it important to warn prospective readers that journal two is not a real abridgement based on the same cons consistent rationale that governs Smith’s abridgement of the other journals in an intimate chronicle. Rather, it is an often misleading agglomeration of unconnected and out of context excerpts. This is not a criticism of Smith’s editing for, he did a good job with what he had before him. It is simply part of my concern over whether this journal should have been published at all in that form. Now, as you had said previously, he’s an apologist for the church and he didn’t want them out because the church doesn’t want them out. So that’s one, that’s one thing to acknowledge. But I think it’s also important to consider what he’s saying. And also this gives us an idea of why the church doesn’t want these out. Because if Clayton is saying on the one hand, in certain excerpts, they’re having these tremendous problems. And on the other hand, they’re very much in love and the entire narrative that that Emma is a psychopath. OK? Is a psychopath, seriously mentally challenged? She’s got, she’s got real, real mental disorder. OK. That’s
[2:37:08] Michelle: what people will say that people actually claim that they actually
[2:37:12] Jeremy Hoop: get it from this journal and almost exclusively from this journal. OK. So when you have on the one hand, them being very close in Clayton recording that himself. And on the other hand, you have the psychopathy of Emma Smith on detail and Joseph’s callousness on detail, which also that does appear, how do you balance those two? Well, Alan did not mention the following. Yeah, James Allen did not mention that every single one of the polygamy references regarding Joseph and Emma those happen to be in the gap book.
[2:37:54] Michelle: Huh? What
[2:37:59] Jeremy Hoop: every single reference? So why is it that Clayton would create a second book. Why is it that he would stop in the middle of the first one and leave a 17 month gap before the very next entry. And that every single um uh that the gap that he the gap book that he records in the second book contains all of the salacious material. Why would someone do that? Let’s answer the question. Why would Clayton do that? Well, I think that’s the idea that should be explored. That’s the thing that James Allen should have been talking about and should have frankly let us all know in his warning because he knows that.
[2:38:40] Michelle: How do you know that? How is that from the
[2:38:43] Jeremy Hoop: page? Because I’ve gone through meticulously Robert Phillips compilation? OK. And I’ve color coded them and I’ve marked them all up and I know exactly where all of them are and they start the references to Joseph Smith with one teeny minor exception, but it’s recorded in both books. It’s at the very end. It’s the, it’s the marriage to Margaret Moon. He starts the gap book with his marriage to Margaret Moon and he goes on from there. Ok. So you tell me why Clayton Little Willie is recording these things there. So this gap book elicits some extremely important questions. Why in the first place would he leave the gap? You know, what, what possible motivation? What reason
[2:39:32] Michelle: go back. What were the dates of the gap again? Just remind us
[2:39:35] Jeremy Hoop: Ok. So remember the first book goes from 27 November 1842 through 28 April 1843. These dates are so important. Then 20 then the very next entry is 25. September 1844. It’s not like there were a bunch of pages torn out people there, there weren’t pages torn out. It’s just the next entry. Ok. It’s 25. September 1844 through 1845. Then the gap book that covers 27 April 1843 through 24. September 1844 that gap that’s in the first book. What possible motivation would Clayton have to put all the polygamy references related to Joseph in the gap book? OK. Also given Allen’s warning about the out of context ex excerpts from this book. By, by the way, the out of context excerpts, excerpts are all from the gap book. Those out of context salacious ones are from the gap book and the rest of Clayton’s journal showing Joseph and Emma to be very close and very much in love. Should we not be more skeptical about this record?
[2:40:38] Michelle: And I also have to say James Allen as the church apologist, very much on the church’s side, giving this clear warning. And yet the Joseph Smith, historians, all of the church historians 100% rely on the William P journal for every one historian has told me. It is, it’s the definitive story of Joseph’s polygamy. It is the only thing they have and it’s the only thing they use other than the later um affidavits, which many of them had access to the Clayton narrative.
[2:41:12] Jeremy Hoop: Like why, why, why anyone, why anyone would ever say that without ever examining the, the original, without anyone being able to examine the original shows me this is why I call it historical malpractice, shame on you all frankly for making those statements. When, by the way, those of you who are historians, you can do better work than I’ve done. Are you serious? Are you kidding me?
[2:41:38] Michelle: I don’t know if they can. Their bias gets in the way. It’s insane that they are doing this. Their story gets in the way. Maybe it takes people that aren’t trained by them in their malpractice to be able to address this.
[2:41:49] Jeremy Hoop: Maybe we need to have a different view of historians altogether now, especially since we have so much access to information. So finally, why, why in the world would he would he, would he make a clean fair copy of his journals at all? Why would he do this? Well, Alan L again helps us understand. I love James Allen. He just helps us understand because he inadvertently has written about this stuff. So as one of Joseph scribes, he says, Clayton was on the committee that originally began to prepare Joseph Smith’s History of the Church for publication
[2:42:22] Michelle: and that was after Joseph’s death that was in Utah.
[2:42:26] Jeremy Hoop: He’s on the committee. It is well known that much of this history was not written or dictated by Joseph himself. But rather, with this is not while Joseph’s alive, he’s not on the committee. While Joseph’s alive, he’s recording lots. He’s recording, uh, deeds, he’s recording tithing donations. He’s not
[2:42:44] Michelle: true. Revelations.
[2:42:45] Jeremy Hoop: Yeah, he’s not, he’s not part of the, his, he’s not following Richard’s around doing the history. It is well known that much of this history was not written by
[2:42:54] Michelle: C
[2:42:55] Jeremy Hoop: C was not following Richards
[2:42:57] Michelle: was not part of it. I got. Ok.
[2:42:59] Jeremy Hoop: Right. Um uh Much of the history was not written or dictated by Joseph himself, but rather was based on journal entries of his scribes or other people. When these entries were made part of the history, the third person references to Joseph were simply changed by the way that stuff gets really, really wonky because they put things in Joseph’s mouth that you can find nothing any anywhere in the record that he actually said. So that history is problematic.
[2:43:23] Michelle: Also, let’s keep in mind we have the very clear record of them. Absolutely. Changing sources and altering just the October 5th journal entry is probably the most infamous of those. So this committee was up to was up to a lot of mischief. Absolutely.
[2:43:39] Jeremy Hoop: And uh o other changes were made to the text though they usually were minor George Albert Smith and Wilfred Wooer finished the work in 1856. Published it serially. Clayton’s nou journals were among the valuable resources for this history. For example, some of the revelations now included in the history of the Doctrine and covenants were originally recorded in Clayton’s journals. Uh on the evening of February 1918 43 I’ve already referenced this. That’s the one where the spirits of just men made perfect, are able to be detected. Um The entry in Clayton’s journal became practically verbatim. The entry in the history and later section 129 of the Doctrine and covenants, something similar is true for much of section 130 recorded in April tw uh 2nd 1843 as a as a few, as well as a few other sections. William Clayton’s NAVOO journal is one of several sources that Clayton Willard Richards and others drew on when they were preparing Joseph’s History of the church. The excerpts here and are most sim are most similar to the entries in the history. This material illustrates Clayton’s importance in preserving the memory of Joseph Smith. In some instances, the Clayton diary was the only source for the entries in the history and many others. It appears that the compilers also relied on different sources, but Clayton’s journal still provided the greatest substance now in I highly recommend if you want to see this just read. Um This is from James Allen’s uh no toil nor labor fear. Um And at the end of it, no, sorry. This is uh Clayton’s compa uh Clayton and the records of the church. At the end, he compiles all of the listings from Clayton’s journal and where they find themselves in the history of the church. And there happened to be 69 instances from Clayton’s journal pulled directly into the history of the church that is not insignificant at. Oh, so why? It’s
[2:45:25] Michelle: pretty much all of the polygamy? He’s the only source for
[2:45:30] Jeremy Hoop: that, for that. Yes, they don’t, they don’t list a lot of the polygamy stuff necessarily in the history. Um because remember they weren’t fully ready when they were documenting the history to let the cat out of the bag, as they said, OK, they weren’t ready, ready to do that. So, and they were compiling this history starting in 1845 April of 1845 is when they begin. So they’re not putting the polygamy stuff in, they’re using Clayton’s journal, the journal itself for that. However, Clayton is obviously creating a clean, fair copy that can then later be used. We know, for example, this is from the Joseph Smith papers we can see on the in the image on the right, you can see this is in 1845 from the JSP they say Clayton uses, used the Nabu journal to record daily entries da da da. Shortly after Clayton finished making entries in the volume, he apparently loaned or gave it to the church historian’s office. And by winter 1845 1846 the office staff had begun using the journal to work on Joseph’s history. So they, they’re already using this. So the timing, when did he write this? He wrote at least volume one because the entry you’re going to see on the page is from volume one. OK. Volume one was completed sometime by end of 1845 sometime beginning of 1846. Because that’s when they’re using this journal, it’s in inventory. Volume one is OK. The journal was listed in inventories that the church historians office produced in the 19th century. So we have it in inventories in 1858 and in 1878. So we know for certain Clayton’s journals are in inventory then, but where they’re referencing the journals, whether he actually gives it to them permanently. In 1845 we don’t know, but they’re referencing the journals and the pages from the journals in 1845. As we can see on this page here, this is when Willard Richards and Thomas Bullock are working together to create what’s called the history draft. OK. It’s a draft of what later becomes the official history. Bullocks and Richards did that together. Ok. Richards is the primary historian. Bullocks is helping him and you can see this is in Bullock’s handwriting. It says Clayton’s journal pages 53 and 54. They’re referencing. Um There are three administrations, angel spirits and devils. When an angel something appears this is, that’s what becomes later. Section 129 of the Doctrine and covenants, they record this in 1845. The I point that out, I’m spending time on this. So you understand, he’s working on this very likely at the same time he’s working on the council of 50 record. When did he start that? September 1844 in the same type of book that he’s recording the journal in very likely what he’s doing after Joseph dies. He starts to realize, oh, my gosh, I have possession of some records that are important. Oh, my gosh, I’m not even gonna tell anybody. Oh my gosh, I better, I better, I better make this thing look good. So he’s recording the Council of 50 records. Doesn’t tell Brigham Young doesn’t tell Willard Richards. Remember they start recording the history of the church in 1845. Does Clayton turn it over in 1845? Yeah. Not until 1847. Would Brigham Young have wanted that record?
[2:48:57] Michelle: Yeah. So he could decide whether to destroy it or not, what to do with it. Britain wanted to be in charge of all
[2:49:02] Jeremy Hoop: of it he wanted. In fact, uh I’m gonna read something from William Smith here in a second about that. So after Joseph’s death, several of Clayton’s journal entries were entered into Joseph Smith history. They became canonized sections of the Doctrine and covenants. That’s how important Clayton’s journal is. Section 129. 1 31 31. And of course, section 132 which is not in his journal, just a reference. Clayton plays the important role, at least in the story of how that comes about.
[2:49:35] Michelle: Do you know what? I don’t know if we know for, I’m just throwing this out there. We don’t have all of the pages of the journal. We don’t know for sure that 132 isn’t in it as well. And I just, on my last episode, Clayton did claim that he wrote the whole thing. And so it is just possible,
[2:49:52] Jeremy Hoop: it’s possible. We don’t, we don’t know because we don’t have it, we don’t know. So ad this is also another piece that’s important, a different kind of problem arises from an account in the history that was reported to have come from Clayton’s journal. But that actually did not, at least not from the journals. Now, uh extent on May 18th, 1843 Joseph Smith and William Clayton were in Carthage where they dined with Joseph, just Judge Stephen a Douglas at the home of Sherri Sheriff Jacob Bains. Some of that conversation is recording Clayton’s journal, but not the way it later appeared in the history. However, in putting the conversation in the history, the editors did not follow their usual pattern of entering whatever they could gather without citing the source. Instead they took pains to state that the following brief account is from the journal of William Clayton who was present. Uh And they write it down, the question is whether this expanded version of Clayton’s original entry where it came from, if somehow it really came from Clayton, there are only two possibilities. One is that Clayton wrote it in a more, in more than one journal that day, perhaps in a source that is no longer extant. The the other is simply that Clayton who was still working with the church historians when they were putting all this together, was asked about the prophecy and drawing on a vivid memory of the occasion provided the expanded account because it’s not in his journal. Hm OK. My point bringing that up is it shows that he’s working with the historians. They’re saying it comes from his journal, but we don’t have, it’s not in his journal. So where did it come from? Another record? Did Clayton make it up? The point is this brings into question what other things Clayton was doing and the completeness, the accuracy, the veracity of what we call the Clayton journals. OK. Those are very important. Even when he was involved in important council meetings. Clayton’s name was often left out of the official histories that clo chronicled those meetings. This plays into something we’re going to talk about later. Brigham Young’s history of April 2018 45 for example, tells of a council attended by himself, Heber Kimball John Taylor, Nel Whitney, where quote we read letters from Parley p pratt pertaining to his activities in the east. But Clayton was also at that meeting and it was he who actually read Pratt’s letters to the council. So they don’t even record that he’s there. I think we’re, I think, I think, um, we’re going to see here in a second. Ok. So what, so they use the, they used Clayton’s journal for the history. Big deal. Who cares? So, what I mean? Come on. Right. Right. We need to understand Brigham Young’s involvement in the revision of Joseph’s history. As you’ve just mentioned, I’m just gonna do a very hopefully quick rundown of just some of the things uh that, that we know for certain were revised. You know, I heard Bill real say this the other day. Oh yo, we know Joe uh Brigham revised the history and then, and then he gave a strange example of a, of a quote revelation that Joseph Smith gives, which I believe there’s a great, wonderful explanation for. However, he doesn’t mention any of this stuff. And Bill, please, would you at least be honest about this and actually acknowledge what Brigham Youngish did, by the way, if you guys want to see a detailed recitation, just go to Rob Fing Ham’s discussion of this um or go to Mark Curtis who did a fantastic job with this on Hemlock Knots. Uh Look these up on youtube and, and they give you a deep dive into these things, but just a brief thing on April 8 8, April 1st 1845. Brigham says we started the revision of Joseph Smith’s history. Now, this is really important. William Smith says, and summarizing that Brigham took over all of Joseph’s papers in 1845 he, he just commandeered them. Uh in contrary to the Smith family’s um claims for Joseph’s property, they wanted Joseph’s papers back, but Brigham took them all over as his own property. Now, why? So he could revise the history of the church. That’s exactly why
[2:53:47] Michelle: that’s actually super important because think of it, if your spouse, you get like you’re, you’re the spouse, right? That’s how it should be. Brigham hadn’t even settled the succession crisis like he had no business at all. Well, they
[2:54:04] Jeremy Hoop: did, they did settle that end of 1844. So that was, that was done the 12 took over by that point and then they commandeered the papers.
[2:54:12] Michelle: Ok. Ok. They also though were trying, I guess, I guess what I should say is they didn’t have unanimity. They were not the recognized authority by everybody, especially not by Emma. And they were desperately, I’ve mentioned this before, but I think it’s worth mentioning again. They were desperately trying to get the um the Bi the Bible translation, which I think is really important to recognize the Bible translation. Rob just did a great video on that as well in no way supports polygamy and in no way can supports 132 and I think they desperately wanted that so they can revise, alter it as well. And it’s, it’s really important to look at what went through their hands and what didn’t because those things tell a very different story.
[2:54:57] Jeremy Hoop: So let me emphasize this from William Smith. It says what you’re saying. Brigham Young John Taylor Willard Richards with the appointed bishops has have assumed the publishing of the church documents, the book of Covenants and also Jose’s private history as their own property entirely regardless of the rights of the Smith family as there with connected. Ok.
[2:55:17] Michelle: It makes me so angry. It makes me so angry what they did to Emma and
[2:55:21] Jeremy Hoop: why and why did they want everything? And if Clayton was withholding something and they knew about it, would they have let that stand? And if they knew that he had withheld it, would they be happy with little Willie that that question historians you should really look into. Richard Van Wagner has written extensively on this and he’s the one who said um regarding the church’s history in total, the introductory assurance that no historical or doctrinal statement has been changed is demonstrably wrong, wrong, which by the way, that statement has been repeated in various forms by church leaders for generations. There’s nothing wrong in the history. We’ve never lied about this stuff. We’ve never changed things, nothing’s been altered. Ok. He says overshadowed by editorial censorship, hundreds of deletions, editions and alterations. Hundreds, these seven volumes are not always reliable. That’s an understatement. The 19th century propaganda mill was so adroit that few outside Brigham Young’s inner circle were aware of the behind the scenes alteration. So seamlessly stitched into the history of the church. The quorum of the 12 under Brigham Young’s leadership began altering the historical record shortly after Smith’s death. Contrary to the introductions claims Smith did not author the history of the church. The time of his 1844 death, the narrative had been written by Joseph himself only to 5 August 1838. OK. There was nothing after 1838 that Joseph had his hands on Charles Wesley Wandell, assistant church historian at the time in 1844 who had later left the church, who was was aghast at these emendations, commenting on the many changes made to the historical work as it was being serialized. Wandell noted in his diary, I noticed the interpolations because having been employed in the historian’s office at NAVOO by Doctor Richards and employed two in 1845 in compiling this very autobiography. I know that a I know, I know that after Joseph’s death, his memoir was doctored to suit the new order of things. And this too by the direct order of Brigham Young to Doctor Richards and systematically by Richards that this revision. It’s an incredibly important quote that everyone overlooks and no one repeats and they should repeat it at nauseam because this is why we, we mentioned this, the false traditions of our fathers are what get us to lose light and truth. If we have been, we, we, we’ve been told our history, um is, is one thing when in reality it was another and this is demonstrably true from, there are so many stories and so there are hundreds of deletions and insertions in the
[2:58:07] Michelle: history. Yes. And even if it’s not from a faith perspective where we’re concerned about false doctrines and false beliefs, people should just care about truth and what’s true and what’s not. Historians should have some amount of pride to not just spout forth lies. They should at least want to get to the truth. I think that Don Bradley does
[2:58:29] Jeremy Hoop: that Don Bradley is, I can have a great conversation with him. Don Don is a fair minded man and Harold B. Lee was a fair minded man who said, look, I’m paraphrasing, but we, our history can stand up to the truth. We should not be afraid of the truth and, and, and if it’s true, we should want to know it. Basically. That’s my feeling. If it’s true, we should want to know it. And if
[2:58:54] Michelle: truth damages our narrative, it ought to be damaged.
[2:58:57] Jeremy Hoop: That’s what he said. That’s the other part of what he said continuing that this revision or censorship of the official history came from Brigham Young, as evidenced by an 11th July 1856 reference in Wilfred Woodruff’s diary Apostle Woodruff working in the church historian’s office. Question Young, respecting a quote piece of history in book E one page 16 81-2 concerning Hiram leading this church. By the way, you can see that on the Joseph Smith papers and tracing the ironic priesthood young advised quote. It was not essential to be inserted into history and had better be omitted as you, as you will see it. When you learn more about Brigham Young, he did not like Hiram at all and he was threatened by the memory of Hiram and was especially threatened by what people remembered about Joseph saying about Hiram leading the church and being the heir to Joseph because Brigham did not want that in the record at all. Years later, Elder Char Charles W Penrose, a member of the first presidency admitted that after Joseph Smith’s death, some changes were made in the official record for quote prudential reasons. OK. So there’s too many references to, to, to enumerate. But we see in the history of the church, Brigham Young and in his manuscript history as journal, talking about revising the history over and over and over. What do they mean by revising the history? You know, is it just, well, we’re just, you know, we’re just cleaning up a little bit. No, the revising of the history as it says in this particular document in The Man Man manuscript history to be revised. OK. This section to be revised, it meant actually changing the meaning of the documents as you referenced the October 5th 1843 journal entry from Joseph Smith where he’s walking up down the street street with his scribe and he says uh about the preaching of the doctrine of the plurality of wives on this law, Joseph forbids it, he forbids it no man shall have but one wife. But in the revised version, they changed the meeting. Unless, unless I say it’s ok. Ok. Unless I say it’s ok, then you can’t do it. That is. And Brian Hales gives frankly the, the, the the most inane argument for that
[3:01:09] Michelle: my brain, I had to apologize to my brain after watching that and say, I’m sorry for subjecting you to that degree of idiocy. I don’t even know how he thinks that is a logical explanation. I’m sorry to be. But yeah, you keep going because you might, I want to point
[3:01:27] Jeremy Hoop: out well in the letter to the Relief Society on May March 31st 1842 in the con in the notes written by Eliza Snow of the meeting. OK, where she records the letter that Joseph writes to the Relief Society. In that letter, he’s responding to the nefarious stuff that John Bennett is doing and John Bennett and chauncey Higby and others that are going around uh uh uh defrauding and defaming and a a and de flowering, I suppose they’re, they’re, they’re abusing women saying Joseph told us we can do this and, and Joseph makes it so abundantly clear that you cannot do any of those things and they will be damned and you will be damned if you follow them. And he says that uh whether they’re seer revelator, patriarchs, 12 apostles, elders, priests, mayors, generals, city, city councilors, Alderman, marshals, police lord mayor or the devil. He says, if any of these people come to you saying you can do this stuff, you can basically put them down. Um uh they’re, they’re culpable and damned for those practices. OK? He’s saying I am not, I can’t tell you these things and nobody can tell you these things, but they change it. No, the Joseph Smith paper says that the letter in Willard Richards handwriting was first was first for which they can provide absolutely no proof. It’s a stand alone letter. It has to be that
[3:02:52] Michelle: way, but it happens to make sense. Of course,
[3:02:55] Jeremy Hoop: it does. It happens to make the same exact editorial change as what we saw with the journal entry, the exact same change. Uh Don’t listen to anybody saying this stuff unless it be by message delivered to you by our own mouth. Unless we say so, then you can’t do it. OK? Go read that on the Joseph Smith papers and see how they twist themselves in knots to try to make Joseph secretly doing these things while saying another thing publicly
[3:03:23] Michelle: polygamy doctrine. So Joseph and Hyrum consistently repeatedly said the standards in the scriptures. The long traditional those are what you follow. The polygamist morality is always follow those unless God or your leader says otherwise consistent line that we always find between the two versions which,
[3:03:46] Jeremy Hoop: which follows itself into the happiness letter. For example, that, that same crazy notion. Then we have uh Hiram’s 18 April 8th, 1844 talk which he just rails on plural marriage. A polygamy, spiritual wifey for an hour and a half, a fiery sermon.
[3:04:05] Michelle: I just read extensively from that in my last episode. Yeah.
[3:04:08] Jeremy Hoop: And so the audience knows about this and of course, they took it out of the draft and then they took it out of the prepublication history. They just crossed it out, they just crossed it out. And then when it came to
[3:04:18] Michelle: actually, first they changed it first, they tried to make those editorial correct,
[3:04:24] Jeremy Hoop: they tried to make changes to it, but it didn’t even work. So they crossed it out. And then by the time it made it the history, there’s nothing there except many other remarks were made by the speaker
[3:04:34] Michelle: and, and an interesting thing I just found in that also, Hiram said in that speaking of eternal marriage, he doesn’t say exactly the same wording, but it’s basically, it’s so plain, I can make any man understand it. That was fascinating to see that show up in William Clayton version of polygamy, just like Joseph said, according to many references, if Brigham ever led the church, he would lead it directly to hell. Brigham transforms that to be about somebody else, right? But the same wording, I find it fascinating how they did this so that there was enough recognition that people would buy it maybe, but it was changed to fit the new order of things again and again, you find these patterns.
[3:05:12] Jeremy Hoop: What, what I, what I, what I would love to see is Brigham Young who was on the stage while he’s giving that sermon. I’d love to see Brigham on his face. Oh, yeah. And then we have in July 18th, 1856 I called upon President Young read a piece of history book. He won. I referenced this previously, but this is the reference in um from Wilfred Woodruff’s journal where he’s recording that Brigham Young doesn’t want certain things about Hiram to be put into the, the official history. And then we have a document that says not to go in by bys orders. This is also about Hiram leading the church. That’s that same reference that I just mentioned. And then of course, there is this really interesting reference where he says I spent the day in pre. This is Wilfred Woodruff and President Young was with us 3.5 a quarter hours in hearing history. Um read, he asked if there had been any note made of his meeting in Nauvoo at Joseph’s house. Now, in a previous episode, talking about Brigham and Heber, I read from 1866 where Brigham Young gives this long recitation of this meeting. He went to at Joseph’s house where Hiram was there preaching about the importance of the Canon of scripture. And that if anyone preaches anything contrary to the canon of scripture, you can set him down as an impostor and then Joseph buries his head in his hands. Yeah. Though he’s terribly embarrassed and says to Brigham, get up, you correct the record. Brigham basically, and Brigham does correct. The record says I wouldn’t give the ashes of a rye straw for all the scriptures in the world without the living oracles. OK. And then Hiram so embarrassed gets up and begs the congregation for forgiveness. Ok. This is a story he tells in 1866. Well, this is what he’s referring to um here in 1856. Ok. This is why they’re revising the history. So um at the time, Hiram had preached the book of Mormon doctrine and covenants as the standard while I took the ground that there were, they were of no account to us without a living prophet and revelation. I told him we would examine and see. Well, uh there that did not make it into the documentary history of the church. That story, they couldn’t figure they couldn’t find it. So Brigham in 1866 10 years later because by the way, in 1856 they started publishing it, they start publishing the history of the church in serial form. They couldn’t find the reference. So they didn’t add it in 1856 1866 he gives a speech as, uh, let me tell you what actually happened. Ok. And guess what? It finally found, it found its way into the History into the book Saints. So, unfortunately, the same kind of chicanery nonsense is going on now. Oh, absolutely.
[3:07:52] Michelle: 100%. In fact, the in, in Saints is the altar version of Hyrum speech references from that. They, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s absolutely continuing strong
[3:08:04] Jeremy Hoop: to this. And in this one, they don’t say according to Brigham Young in 1866 who gave a sermon uh uh recalling what had happened back in 1843. No, no, no, no, no. What they say is Brother Brigham. They just quoted as though it’s happening contemporaneously as though it’s happening on the day. That’s the kind of stuff that I find to be historical malpractice. And I think it’s got to stop. The happiness letter is another one won’t go into this. But the happiness letter um was originally dated second of August 1842 is published by John Bennett. Uh It was he who claimed it was in the handwriting of Willard Richards. Uh But it was entered into the manuscript history um in an addendum.
[3:08:49] Michelle: We we so I wanted to point out this was surprising to me, we have no version of this other than what John Bennett printed in the Sangamo Journal. We don’t have the a letter from Willard Richards. We don’t have anything other than John Bennett’s claims. And while they cut Hiram speech out, they actually included John Bennett, the guy who was plotting mercilessly to have Joseph Smith destroyed. They included him in the history. That’s insane.
[3:09:16] Jeremy Hoop: Meanwhile, Joseph Sydney Ridding and Nancy Rig and the subject of the woman about whom the whole, the whole subject was uh what was framed. They all denied it was uh it was from Joseph. Um Bennett’s claims were never corroborated and it was also published in the teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith. That’s the,
[3:09:35] Michelle: the Sangamo Journal was asking Bennett to get the women to write um affidavits to get it firsthand from them. And so they were asking him for that and he still couldn’t come through
[3:09:45] Jeremy Hoop: now to their credit, the editors of the JSP today, they doubt the connection of the happiness letter to Joseph Smith. And it’s no longer published in the History of the Saints. So at least there’s that, at least it hasn’t continued and, and made its way into the, into the current history,
[3:10:00] Michelle: but it’s so gas lighting because they haven’t corrected it just pretend it never happened. No,
[3:10:05] Jeremy Hoop: they, they, they, they still leave room for, maybe, maybe it is, but at least they doubt it, at least there’s a little progress there
[3:10:11] Michelle: quoted in general conference multiple times. I will say that. And I’m not blaming her church leaders. They’re not the historians, they’re just using the sources that they’ve been given by the historians.
[3:10:22] Jeremy Hoop: And then of course, there’s Lucy Mac’s history. Brigham wanted all the copies destroyed. Ok. He was really mad because Orson Pratt published an independent copy on his own and he wanted that whole thing swooped up because, well, because it favored Hiram and it said some good things about Emma. You know, it didn’t, it didn’t, it didn’t do exactly what Brigham wanted. According to modern historians, Lucy’s history tests extremely well. Uh Brigham said she was an old woman. She had, she lost her memory, she wasn’t reliable and she was uh spewing, he calls it um uh transmitting lies to posterity. And I know that the curse of God will rest on everyone who keeps these books in their houses. I mean, he just, he, he spent an entire speech in front of the congregation talking about this and, and, and chastising all the members of the church and, and demanding that they all be rounded up
[3:11:17] Michelle: in, in another of the many brilliant examples of complete projection, right? Brigham accuses Lucy of teaching lies about the history of the church, the posterity of the church. Brigham accuses Lucy of doing that when that is exactly what
[3:11:31] Jeremy Hoop: Brigham. And according to all evidence, she was, she was very sharp in her last years, very sharp. And then of course, we have, as we’ve mentioned the strange journals, uh journals, the, the memo books by Willard Richards. Which why would anyone add to the journals? Why would anyone after Joseph’s dead? Not Richards himself? Right. In the journals like Thomas Bullock did, for example. And by the way, these references, the things that are added are about polygamy or about, or about posthumous or about ceilings that took place or about uh uh some, some plural marriages that took place. Bullock recording some of them, for example. Um Oh boy, my computer is not loading as fast as I’d like it to. So you see, he’s, he’s listing a whole bunch of marriages. Bullock does and he does it. This is long after in the 18 fifties, then you have somebody else writing and this is not Richards. Um Also some things about um uh marriages. Um Let’s see, an anointing uh entered in by Brigham Young president of the 12. Why would anybody do this? Why would you write into a journal unless you’re doing something to alter the history? Then we have John Bernheisel who records a whole bunch of ceilings. These are really, really strange. So this whole pattern. Um oh and of course he leaves the, the hundreds of pages blank and I think we can see why because he meant to add things later and after he died and Richards died in 1854. OK. People were adding things after he died. I think he meant to add things to it. But people took up the mantle after he died in 1854. And they started adding things to the journal. Anyway. Also, there are sermons that Joseph preached, that we don’t have. Uh according to Joseph Smith himself in the, in the Navoo City Council or sorry High Council minutes in the trials of the women who testified against Chauncey Higby and John Bennett and others. One of the things that some of the, that one of the women asked chauncey Higby was, why does Joseph preach so much against what you’re teaching me? OK. And Joseph says, when I asked why I publicly preach so much against it, wait, publicly preached against what John Bennett was doing. Where are those sermons? Why don’t we have those? OK. And then that pattern continued on for decades afterwards, creating questionable affidavits with legalistic language like married or sealed with glaring inconsistencies. Many with no notary seals, some with outright falsehoods like my great, great great grandfather, Thomas Grover, legal testimonies, fraught with inconsistencies and provable lies. Later, memoirs with glaring omissions, inconsistencies like Joseph Kingsbury and Elizabeth Whitney and Emily Partridge editing letters like Andrew Jensen did with the, the daughter of Elvira Coles lying before Congress like Joseph F Smith did this pattern started by Brigham Young of altering the history and lying about what happened. Started with him and continued on well into the early 20th century.
[3:14:34] Michelle: I love the quote by Emma Smith when she told Brigham Young the first two principles of your gospel are lying and deceit.
[3:14:41] Jeremy Hoop: It’s absolutely true. Exactly. Right. The revising of Joseph’s history was a critical part of Brigham Young’s administration and William Clayton played a key role but not necessarily one that Brigham liked. Remember that William did not tell Brigham about the Council of 50 record for over, for at least two years after Brigham begun, began the revision of Joseph’s history. Would he have been happy about that fact? Or would Brigham have been furious? Now, remember what we said on the same day that Clayton tells Brigham that stout’s threatening to kill him, he delivers up the record. That’s interesting. On the same day, Brigham,
[3:15:27] Michelle: are you thinking that Brigham put stout up to killing Clayton as a way to get the record from him? I have, I
[3:15:33] Jeremy Hoop: have no idea that’s, that would be that, that would be a bridge too.
[3:15:37] Michelle: So we don’t, we don’t know if you’re not making
[3:15:39] Jeremy Hoop: a point of that. Here’s what we can say again. Thank you to James Allen. Much changed for Clayton after 1847. He was never as close to the center of power as he had been in the days of Joseph no longer wa was he the prophet’s official scribe and bookkeeper though, for a time, he worked in Brigham Young’s office and kept some of the financial records of the church. He also performed the duties of historian or clerk as periodically assigned in 1852. He went on a mission though he was released early because of accusations against him. I’m putting that in brackets. Ok. He was released early from his mission. Well, we’re going to learn more about that in the next episode,
[3:16:18] Michelle: just like James White had accused him of. He, he was accused of a lot of a lot accused of
[3:16:24] Jeremy Hoop: theft, he was accused of all kinds of things and and Clayton records a lot of those accusations. We’re going to read those in the next episode. But after that, it appears, he stood progressively further outside the prophet’s inner circle. Though Clayton continued to preach in public meetings and take care of mis miscellany’s tasks at the request of church leaders. He frequently found himself looking backward, longing for his former closeness to the seat of power and in particular, the intimate friendship with the men of power that he uh once enjoyed as one of Joseph’s right hand men for some reason, unexplained in the records, William Clayton had fallen out of favor with Brigham Young some months before his mission. In addition, Clayton’s correspondent suggests that he had made some personal though unspecified mistakes that, that he wanted deeply to overcome in the footnote in this paper that he’s writing. He says in this footnote seven, the main indication of this is in a letter from Clayton to Young January 9th, 1852 Brigham Young papers in which Clayton discussed very formally, some aspects of Young’s accounts and says, but if it were lawful and I were not so far fallen beneath your confidence, I would suggest a few ideas which to me look just and right. He closes the letter yours in the depths of sorrow. William Clayton, the tone of part of the letter of October 1840 1852 quoted frequently here also suggests a former falling out with Brigham Young. Why James Allen cannot connect the 1847 incident with the council of 50 records is frankly beyond me. And we’re gonna discuss more about the falling out between Brigham Young and William Clayton in the next episode because this is very important to understand. So 1847 he finally delivers up the records the day after he tells Brigham Young that Jose is trying to kill me. And Brigham says you got 30 minutes go. I delivered the records of the kingdom. Brigham Young, could they be connected? I think they are, I think they are. I think somehow Clayton used that. This is, this is me opining for those historians out there. I’m opining now I am stating my opinion and not fact, but I believe that Clayton used that as leverage to somehow get him out of a very sticky situation because Brigham Young never for forsook jos a stout. He kept him employed and kept him very close because he was an essential part of his uh paramilitary or police force. Ok. And so Clayton had a reason to keep the journal secret and then he had a reason to give it up. I believe it’s because he was in trouble and he needed to give those records up to Brigham.
[3:19:10] Michelle: Do you think that his reason, what do you think his reason was for keeping it secret? Was it was it to keep in his back pocket, back pocket in case he got in trouble? Do you think he was doing a service for them? That they were, that they’d be so happy to like what was his reason for keeping them and doing it? You
[3:19:25] Jeremy Hoop: see in his journal, many references to him being on the outside looking in, you see him not being on the inner circle. What you see is a man trying to be on the inner circle and very upset at times that he’s not
[3:19:36] Michelle: the wanna be. That’s why I call him the wanna be. Yeah,
[3:19:38] Jeremy Hoop: absolutely. A wanna be and I believe that he knew he had something important and for what we don’t know exactly why but, but
[3:19:47] Michelle: he got to write the history. He could shape it as he wanted to regarding himself. Maybe it was a way to be important or
[3:19:55] Jeremy Hoop: he could use it later at a time when he needed it or he, because a record, the council of 50 is an incredibly important event in church history. It’s incredibly important. And Clayton knew it. Ok. He absolutely knew it. That’s why he was making the record. And that’s the only reason, that’s the only reason we have any record of that organization other than a very few, two or 34 notes minutes that, that have survived. That’s all because of Clayton’s clear copy.
[3:20:31] Michelle: Do you find the Council of 50 records to be accurate and reliable?
[3:20:35] Jeremy Hoop: Because there’s no way there’s, there’s absolutely no way to know. Ok, because as the Joseph Smith papers explained, they tell us how he made it. Ok. Clearly that, that he’s, he’s reconstructing events
[3:20:50] Michelle: in general with Clayton and just like with Bennett or others. My perspective is kind of, if I can verify what he said, then I’ll accept it if it aligns with other things. But if it’s just him, I’m gonna just do a
[3:21:03] Jeremy Hoop: hand. I think, I think if I think if we’re being fair, we should be skeptical about anything recorded after the event, especially from people who have proven themselves to not be trustworthy. Correct. Now, I think we can read it for what it is. It’s a fair copy written afterwards. We don’t have the original minutes. We don’t know exactly what happened on the day
[3:21:24] Michelle: by a guy who is very unreliable, very motivated, who we’ve already shown to be extremely dishonest as it serves him for whatever reasons he has. Ok. Can you continue on
[3:21:36] Jeremy Hoop: at his own funeral? This is what Joseph F Smith and John Taylor said about William Clayton
[3:21:46] Michelle: and they were the next generation. So he was still on the outs it it handed down.
[3:21:50] Jeremy Hoop: Ok. So imagine imagine something like this being said about you or your father? Naturally, this is Joseph F Smith. Naturally, he was concerned about how he might fare in the next life. That’s a good way to start. Naturally. He was concerned if he could have listened to the church leaders who spoke his, his, oh, this sorry, this is um this is Alan, I’m sorry, this is Alan uh about to quote them. Um If he could have listened to church leaders who spoke at his funeral, he would have been comforted James. I don’t know why in the world you use that term because this is what they said, quote. He was not without his faults in the flesh, said elder Joseph F Smith. But what were they? Were they such as partook of a deadly character? Did he ever deny the prophet Joseph or did he deny the truth or prove unfaithful to his covenants or to his brethren? No, never but notwithstanding his unflinching integrity and his long life of fidelity, fidelity and usefulness. Let me say to you that as for his faults, however trivial or important he must answer, but he will be able to pay for his debts and to answer for his failings and he will come forth and all that has been pronounced upon his head by Joseph Smith. And the apostles will be confirmed upon him throughout all eternity.
[3:23:06] Michelle: Oh, my word. This is about a dead man at his own funeral in front of his family.
[3:23:11] Jeremy Hoop: Then let me say to the family of our deceased brother, follow in the footsteps of your husband and father accepting where he may have manifested the weaknesses of the flesh, imitate his staunch integrity to the cause of Zion and his fidelity to his brethren. Be true as he was true, be firm as he was firm. Never flinching, never swerving from the truth as God has revealed it to us. And I will promise you in the name of the Lord that you will rise to meet your husband and father in the morning of the first resurrection, close with glory and mortality, internal lives. Ok. In the same spirit, the new leader of the church, John Taylor sanctioned El Elder Smith’s remarks and added, if there were any weaknesses in him, pass them by and live for God and for truth, he will be all right. So he tried to soften it a little bit. Can you imagine? Can you imagine John Taylor, the president? Sorry, this is 1879. So yes, the president of the church and Joseph F Smith Apostle that’s speaking about you in that fashion at your funeral. Yeah.
[3:24:17] Michelle: Or even it was even on the more local level. We, you know, when we do funerals in the LDS world, the bishop is the final speaker. So what if you were at the funeral of a loved one or whoever it was? And all of a sudden the bishop got up and started doing these kind of jabs and the underhanded. Like, how would you feel about that? That’s insane.
[3:24:36] Jeremy Hoop: You only do that if you despise someone,
[3:24:39] Michelle: absolutely despise someone because, yeah, that’s her funeral.
[3:24:43] Jeremy Hoop: So given what we know about Brigham’s efforts to control all of Joseph’s papers and revise the history would Brigham have been bothered by Clayton’s withholding the council of 50 record, I think. Absolutely. I think that’s where it began, James Allen. He had a falling out with Brigham Young, but I think it happened sometime, probably even before 1847 because he wasn’t even in the mix. And I think that’s why he delivers the records up in 1847. Given what
[3:25:09] Michelle: he was doing the records to try to get his way back in that
[3:25:13] Jeremy Hoop: bingo. He
[3:25:16] Michelle: had
[3:25:16] Jeremy Hoop: something he knew that they would want. Absolutely. They didn’t know they didn’t know how close or what he was really to Joseph Smith. I believe they didn’t know he was doing all these, they didn’t know what records he was keeping. Well, given Williams role, especially through the journal in shaping Joseph’s history and given that he would eventually lose favor with Brigham Young. Is it possible that he would have a motive to fabricate any of the stories. Remember what we said about the rules of evidence? You have to prove it’s a contemporaneous record. You have to prove it’s trustworthy that the person writing it is trustworthy. I think we’re proving, we’ve proved number one, it’s not contemporaneous or you cannot say it’s contemporaneous.
[3:26:07] Michelle: I, I know, I think we can say we’ve proven that it’s not contemporaneous. I
[3:26:10] Jeremy Hoop: think we are proving the and in the next, we’re gonna prove inconsistencies. We’re gonna prove about his. We have already been examining his character. He is not a trustworthy individual. He wrote the clean copy from his journal on the very, oh, there are possibilities. By the way, that number one here, let me acknowledge, he wrote this clean copy. You cannot say anything but that it’s a clean copy from his journal, from his original journal on the very same day or shortly thereafter. But if so, how do we count for that gap book?
[3:26:45] Michelle: And how do you account for the consistency of the entries? And it
[3:26:49] Jeremy Hoop: is possible that he went a week, right? Wrote his journal and said, I just need to, I need to clean this up. So while he’s recording the next week’s entries, he’s going back and recording while he’s doing all of his other work, by the way. OK. He’s recording a clean copy at the time. OK. He wrote it sometime after, but it is a true, fair or exact copy of the original. But if so then what about that gap book? What, where’s the rough gap book as well? OK. He wrote it af I think the most logical, the most consistent he wrote it after Joseph Smith’s death, he used it to create a narrative to support quote the new order of things. This ex this explanation accounts for Clayton’s pattern of creating records. It accounts for the fair copy nature of the journals. It accounts for the situation Clayton was in with Brigham Young and Clayton’s possible motive and it also perfectly accounts for the strange gap book with all of the Joseph Smith polygamy references. It’s the only consistent narrative is that he did it afterwards and he invented things and put them in the gap book. Now, could it be considered an authentic um daily record in a court of law? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It would be thrown out. We would not admit it in, in, in, in any courtroom in the country. Absolutely. And it would also the right now because we, they will not release these. I don’t know why they’re taking so long. I suspect the reason they’re taking so long is they have to try to account for the anomalies that James Allen has. Um ha has admitted to, they have to account for the gap book. They have to count what that, what I believe they’re gonna do is in all the references in the journal, they’re gonna have to have a footnote that ties every reference to a later affidavit or story from somebody later. So people can then read back and forth and go, oh, of course. Uh He’s telling the truth instead of reading it the other way. The affidavits and the later stories used that Clayton journal as the foundation for their later stories. Ok. I think that’s why, that’s my speculation. I could be wrong. Now, given what we’ve demonstrated that on that the one singular piece of what you could have legitimately called contemporaneous evidence is proven to be neither contemporaneous nor evidence. Given what we’ve demonstrated about Brigham and Heber’s activities in England and that they believed in a practice spiritual wife, free plurality of wives. Long before Joseph ever could have introduced it to them. Given all the other inconsistencies and lies in the record. Please. To all the commentators, to all the historians, please be more humble and less certain about your pronouncements regarding Joseph and polygamy. Let me offer some humility too in this regard. If you can provide evidence and proof, direct evidence and pro proof, I will give this up, I will give it up and I will admit that you’re right. But until you do that, you need to be more humble about what you’re saying.
[3:29:58] Michelle: We’re the ones that are already on record as following the evidence and changing our minds. I’ve said repeated, I’ve said before that I have publicly to my detriment changed my perspective on things multiple times. You kind of evidence,
[3:30:16] Jeremy Hoop: you did it, you, you changed in the middle of a podcast that was the other way and Midwest stream,
[3:30:25] Michelle: right? And before that I had a bit of a, I, I used to teach and, and people really liked me because I believed polygamy was of God. I believed that thoroughly. And some of the people who liked me the most then hate me the most now. And so I, I just want to point out that we are the ones on record following the evidence. Despite the personal cost, I would like to see the other and then the other side of the ones casting aspersions on us saying that we’re just guilty of motivated reasoning. I find that to be so highly offensive in my own personal situation because it is there, it is provably false. There’s does not have the same record I have of being willing to follow the evidence and change my stance for the sake of truth. Despite the
[3:31:13] Jeremy Hoop: cost, I understand when you staked your claims and you built your reputation and you’ve, you’ve given yourself a speaking tour, you’ve written books and sold books, um, or, or, or you have become, you’ve had notoriety because of some work you’ve done in a certain vein that it’s very difficult to give that up. I’m making no money off this and I never will. Ok. I’m doing this because I believe Joseph has been maligned, I believe, I believe first and foremost that the historical record doesn’t support this. And number two, having looked deeply at Joseph Smith, his life, his character, his work that this man is extraordinary. He is an extraordinary figure in United States history and world history, an extraordinary religious figure and someone that I frankly look up to because of the magnanimity of his soul. He is an extraordinary man. He’s not Jesus Christ. And he himself will say that do not look to me. He will say he said, do not think I uh I am a righteous man. He said he would acknowledge his faults, but he would direct people to Christ and the things he would say that he said to people, the things he taught, they are absolutely worthy of examination. And because of this nonsense, too many people cannot look at those things that he actually did and said. And so what I’m hoping is that we can re examine those things from a fresh per perspective, divorcing ourselves of this notion that he was fork tongued, double minded, a liar because he was not.
[3:32:52] Michelle: And I have to throw in and I’m sorry. But you know, my stance, I’ve repeated this also many times. For me, it’s Emma and I agree with you on the more I read of I, I had to overcome some hard feelings toward Joseph Smith. I’m still working on some of them to some extent, I’m still a little bit, um, a little bit reserved in my effusive praise of him. Although the more I see of him, the more astounded, the more I love him, I will say that, although that’s a hard thing for me to say because it’s come from so far. But dang it, Emma the way that William Clayton talks about her, the way that Brigham Young talked about her, the way that and, and I think also it’s Emma and it’s also woman. It’s women. It’s how does God view women. How would a servant of God view women treat women? Talk about women. What is woman’s place in the kingdom? And that’s so, so I do acknowledge that we both have a big old dog in this fight at this point based in what we have learned because of the evidence. You didn’t start out just having this respect for Joseph Smith. And I didn’t start out being so incensed by these sexist claims against. I mean Joseph Smith. Absolutely. Emma Smith. Every, every step with him in importance and in virtue and sanctity and goodness and in mission from God. And so the two of them together need to be redeemed. And if you want to say we need to, I’m so sick to death of people saying believe the women listen to the testimonies of women. You can’t claim ding it. Listen to Emma Smith, listen to Lucy Max Smith, listen to Catherine Smith, listen to um, all of Joseph’s sisters, listen to any number of women who were telling the truth. And if you want to talk about these other women, I, I will at some point go through all of their testimonies, all of the just silliness of the things that they claim. And so anyway, I think that both of these, all of these people deserve an honest examination not based in, I, I know that we say that like anti Mormons and ex Mormons now say that Mormons are just defending their sacred cows, like just defending Joseph Smith because we have to, it is exactly the opposite. They will ignore all of the evidence and harp on it because their sacred cow is that Joseph was a pedophile predator that all womanizer and all of these things. And that is where the motivated reasoning comes into play. That is where they are unwilling to engage in honesty and an honest consideration of the
[3:35:30] Jeremy Hoop: evidence. There are many, there are many people who have left the church who had to fight really hard with their traditions and to try to figure out what their experiences were all about. And now they’ve gotten to a certain place and they’re unwilling to consider it from a new angle because of the fight they had to engage in, in order to get where they are to be somewhat at peace about where they are. I understand why presenting this stuff is simply untenable to those people because it make, it forces them to realize I made a decision partly on wrong information. I made a decision, decision about my faith experience based on bad information. You mean Joseph Smith wasn’t this kind of guy? What does that say about what, what I was told about the book of Mormon or about the Book of Abraham or about the treasure digging or whatever, whatever the narrative is that you want to pull out of your hat,
[3:36:30] Michelle: at least be open up to re examination, right? When you, when you rejected the church, II I, the church is the wrong term. When you rejected the gospel, the book of Mormon and connection to God you had to grapple with. But what did that spiritual experience mean that I had? And how can I explain this piece of it? And people had to find ways to explain all of those things? Well, those things are still there, not explained. Well, right? You can still re examine and maybe bring things back. Like I know people were so angry at feeling lied to. The fact is you’ve been lied to, you’ve still been lied to the ce s letter is the biggest fattest lie. You can imagine
[3:37:12] Jeremy Hoop: the ce s letter is, is a wet paper bag. All you have to do is examine it and it falls apart. It’s just that simple. It’s
[3:37:24] Michelle: a narrative built on the false church narrative. It’s layers of falsehood
[3:37:31] Jeremy Hoop: So hopefully, this has been a little bit helpful today. And look, we both Michelle and I are really passionate about this subject. And hopefully, hopefully, those of you who are, who find yourselves as ex Mormons or out of the church or you understand that we’re not trying to get you to come back to anything to the church. Only to know the truth about this history. If you want to decide something about your relationship to the book of Mormon or to God, that’s up to you. But please understand that you have not been given the full story about Joseph Smith and polygamy from John Dely from Radio Free Mormon from Brian Hales from Todd Compton. They have told you things that either they knowingly know are not correct or they’re passing on things that are absolutely false and they don’t know it. And I hope, I hope people like John Dely will watch this and other things that Michelle’s done that other people are doing and they will come to their senses and recognize this is not as cut and dry as they painted it out to be. And so in conclusion of today’s episode, oh, please go ahead before
[3:38:36] Michelle: we wrap up just quickly. I want to give an exit path for those who are bound and determined to hate the church because of the difficult experiences they had and the betrayal they felt you still can. If what you really want to do is hate the church. You still can hate the church, right? Because the fact is it is Brigham Young and it, those people got control of it and your experiences are valid. The the problems in the church are valid. You just don’t have to blame the wrong guy to still keep that tradition. And for people who are in the church, who are where I am, you can keep your faith, you can keep connection to the beauty in the gospel. And in the church while recognizing there were huge, huge problems, the idea is to not be a partaker of the problems anymore. So I guess what I’m saying is wherever you are and wherever you want to be accepting the truth doesn’t need to be a threat.
[3:39:32] Jeremy Hoop: And when you actually take Joseph, if you can just start neutrally on him, you know, not even that he’s an honest man, just start neutrally and you can go and read, go read, try the spirits, go read some of the, the sermons he gave to the relief society. Go, go read the King Fallet discourse, go go read his, his sermon on July 16th 1843. On on eternal marriage. Go and read through the things that we can verifiably say came from him. Not the, not the strange things that were altered and edited by him or by others that, that found their way into the scriptures, not those things, not the things that came after his death. Start with him. You might find something different, maybe even extraordinary. And so in conclusion, if you’re
[3:40:17] Michelle: too triggered by Joseph, you can start with Emma. I’m no, I’m serious. For the Joseph. Watch my episode on Emma, you can start there. You can read the narrative, read the things that William Clayton said about Emma read the things that Brigham Young said about Emma and see how that sits with you genuinely, then read about Emma’s actual life. That’s another place to start. If the Joseph Smith place is too high because it’s too triggering, which I understand.
[3:40:44] Jeremy Hoop: And, and if, if you are one of those people and you got all the way through this man, I applaud you. I really applaud
[3:40:50] Michelle: you for now.
[3:40:53] Jeremy Hoop: Well, as we’ve shown today, Clayton’s history shows a clear pattern of manufacturing records or at least embellishing them or at least copying them from those sources into other ones. He had every opportunity to manufacture his journal, his novel journal, especially compared to the Council of 50 Records shows all the signs of being a later edited copy rather than an authentic daily journal. Clayton kept other records that are now not now public like Clayton’s private book or private journal. All of the polygamy references regarding Joseph and Emma are in that gap book and William’s relationship with Brigham proves he had ample motive to fabricate his gap book journal. Clayton’s journal is a clean fair copy, a later creation and cannot be said to be a contemporaneous journal or diary. And frankly, the other side has got the burden of proof. So the only final question is, who do you choose to believe? If you will stick with this, if you’re on the other side? Still, I promise you there’s a lot more to come. If you will stick with this subject, you still probably have lots of. What about, well, what about, well, what about those things? We will examine them? I
[3:42:13] Michelle: always say, please list them in the comments. Let’s keep the conversation going. That’s where we find truth. I love it when people bring to me a problem that I haven’t or a source that I haven’t yet investigated because I want the truth. I want to find, I don’t want to leave any stone unturned
[3:42:29] Jeremy Hoop: when you get to the point where, where you can hear everything that Hales or Bradley or Compton or any of the critics talk about related to Joseph Smith. And you can understand that the narrative surrounding name, your pet thing falls apart. When you examine it closely. When you can get to that point, you will understand that it is not what they say and it looks very different and you just might come to the point where you actually believe Joseph.
[3:42:59] Michelle: Wow. Ok. This was a marathon and it was amazing. So worth the long um wait and the many, the many false starts and the, the price we paid. I hope that people will appreciate because I think this was an incredible presentation. I know it was a lot. Everybody I thank you for sticking with us. I Jeremy, I’m excited to have you come back on. I so appreciate this incredible work that you’ve done. I really appreciate that the te the testimony that you share. It’s good for me to hear it every time because I’m not, you know, I, I’m still working my way through all of this. It’s tough. It’s tricky. There is a lot of damage to overcome based on the things that we’ve been told, you know, and it’s hard, I understand. I understand that it’s hard to trust again, but I love hearing you say it and I love the invitation and I think it is so worthwhile. Well, I
[3:43:52] Jeremy Hoop: appreciate that and, and hopefully, I love the work that you’re doing. I think it’s so important that people um just pursue the truth and I’m so grateful that you’re doing that.
[3:44:07] Michelle: Well, thank you and thank you everybody. We will see you next time for those of you who are still here. You are amazing. Well done. Wow, that was quite a bit. But I did love a lot of the discussion we had and there was so much incredible information here. I hope you agree with that so well done. Go ahead and leave a comment letting us, oh, you made it to the end because I think there should be some sort of award presented to all of you who stuck in this entire time. But um I am so excited to continue to bring forward this information. I think it’s so important and I look forward to our next episode. I’ll see you next time.
