Comparing Joseph Smith’s supposed polygamy of the actual Nauvoo polygamists sheds invaluable light on the validity of the claims against Joseph. Peter Brown joins me as we continue the response to recent explanations of Joseph’s lack of children, Peter clearly demonstrates the evidence that first convinced him that claims of Joseph’s polygamy make no sense and are not plausible. Please share this evidence so it can have the same effect on many others.
As always, I welcome anybody to respond to these facts and this evidence.
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Links:
Response to claims of Joseph’s astrological based conceptions (pgs 89-90)
A few of many links to research male infertility: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3
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’s plural marriage, I am so excited to bring to you the second part of the series on the insurmountable problem of no Children. I want to very sincerely thank Peter Brown for his willingness to sit down and talk about these things with me for taking the time to put together the presentation that we are about to see and for sharing his personal experience and his vast understanding and knowledge. These are such important topics that I hope people will listen to and take very seriously. We are responding directly to the exact claims and charges of some of the most vocal anti Joseph ac accusers. And so they really have the responsibility to listen to these explanations, take them seriously and find a way to respond adequately which to this point, they absolutely have not done. So I think that anyway, I hope that people will share these videos far and wide so that those who really want to claim that Joseph was a polygamist will know what they’re up against and what they have the obligation to respond to if they want to have any credibility or be taken seriously at all. So with that said, thank you so much for all of those who have supported me, for you that are here to join us again. I always hope that people will start and listen to the beginning episodes in this series to truly understand how opposed to all of scripture and all of the word of God polygamy always has been and always will be. And with all of that being said, thank you so much for joining us as we take this deep dive into the murky waters of Joseph’s polygamy. OK. I’m so excited that you are here for our second discussion, our second episode on the insurmountable problem of no Children. And I am thankful to be here with Peter Brown who has been working so hard on this, this polygamy question, Peter. How long have you been working on this? So I know you’re, you have a vast amount of knowledge. Really,
[02:09] Peter Brown: I’ve been involved with this discussion one way or another since 2015.
[02:15] Michelle: Oh OK. So quite a while, eight years. OK. Specifically looking at things about Joseph Smith for that long,
[02:22] Peter Brown: right? I mean, um you know, we’ve all, you know, I, I uh I read the comprehensive history of the church when I was 16 before I went on my mission. And, and so I was somewhat familiar with some of the polygamy arguments, but it just didn’t really crop up in my life. It wasn’t a big issue on my mission, came home, went to BYU and it just kind of disappeared and it wasn’t until, um I would say about a decade ago and a little bit earlier when I started getting involved with um some blogs, if, if people remember the old blogger knuckle and there was different uh, podcasts out there. We weren’t podcasts, there were um forums like times and seasons and, and uh I started doing some writing for Mormon matters and I didn’t do a whole lot, but I got involved with uh really researching different Mormon ideas. Mormon historical ideas and that’s where it really started flowering for me was I would say 2010 and then polygamy itself really kind of came into the equation in 2015. I really wanted to understand and know what was all about this topic related to Joseph Smith because it felt like that for the most part, all I was hearing was sixth grade answers.
[03:41] Michelle: Oh, that’s a great way to describe it. OK. OK. I appreciate you giving that background. I know you’re gonna tell us a little bit more about your story as we go forward. I am, I’m excited to talk to Peter today because he’s done research specifically into some of the issues I introduced last week. Things like um well, nu- polygamy in general and comparing the polygamy of all the novo polygamists to Joseph Smith and also some statistical analysis. Peter has some very um useful and pertinent personal experience that really helps inform this discussion in ways that I think are profound and compelling and that I want people to be able to hear. I also Peter, I have to thank you for being willing to, being willing to do this for those who don’t know, Peter has a brand new baby boy that just got brought home from the NICU a couple of days ago. So he’s snatching a little minute away from his new dad duties with everything that it just a NICU baby is a different animal than a regular newborn. So thank you so much for taking your time and I’m so happy that your baby is doing well and just so happy for, for your story so far. So thank you.
[04:49] Peter Brown: Yeah, thanks. Uh so far so good.
[04:52] Michelle: Ok. Well, is there anything else we should say as preliminaries or should we just jump right in? No, I
[04:57] Peter Brown: think that’s good. I mean, e either is a, there’ll be a moment where where I can kind of share a little bit of my background and, and how this relates to the question at hand. But let’s just go ahead and jump into it and then we can um I’ll, I’ll back up to some, some personal anecdotes that will help sort of the discussion.
[05:15] Michelle: Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, Peter has prepared a presentation, I think you’re gonna share your screen now, right? So he’s gonna share this with us. And as always for everybody, um if you have any questions or insights or thoughts or objections, anything to add, please feel free to. Um it really helps to have the con the conversation continue in the messages. So OK, we’re ready,
[05:36] Peter Brown: right? So, in my mind, when people are debating about the different questions related to Joseph Smith’s polygamy. Um typically, if you read through most of the LDS literature, it’s a lot about the testimonial evidence. And that’s sort of where I was backed up to, I would say about 10 years ago. But then it came to my mind that there was probably the most important question to ask and one that sort of gets avoided in these debates is the lack of visible evidence for his polygamy. You know, I was unaware, I was unaware of this point. You know, I would say 2014, 2015, I assumed that Joseph was a polygamist. I assumed that he had had Children. I’d never heard the point that he didn’t have any Children. It wasn’t something that was uh brought up or if it was mentioned like in a book. Um, you know, because I’d read all the, the, the, the LDS books Bushman’s book. Uh I was reading Quinn’s book, none of that was ever mentioned. None of it was pointed out. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t seen as some sort of like um argument to show why um or one of the more of the challenging points to the entire debate, it just was kind of glossed over or not mentioned at all.
[06:57] Michelle: Isn’t that amazing? I find that amazing. I, I just that we, that we just leave this side of it completely undiscussed. Can you, for anyone who is just wondering or not clear on what testimonial evidence is versus physical evidence? Do you want to give us a quick definition or? Yeah. So, I
[07:14] Peter Brown: mean, you’re looking at all the people that came forward and said they were married to Joseph Smith, all the stories of all the wives, the stories of from Brigham Young. The uh um I mean, going back to my seminary days, it was pretty much the William Clayton narrative. This is what happened. And Hiram and Hiram, um you know, had to, had to bring the revelation Emma to convince her and they ended up burning it in the fire. I mean, I mean, probably from the time I was in junior high, that story was burned into my mind and that just was history to me. I, that’s what I thought
[07:49] Michelle: had, right? I think that’s what’s interesting. We are taught that factually without being given any insight into where the information comes from. So all of the information we have about polygamy that shapes our narrative, what we’re taught comes from the testimonial evidence, which doesn’t start until 1869 Joseph died in 1844. The testimonial evidence starts in 1869. It continues for the next several decades. Right. And then physical evidence would be things like, first of all a child, but there’s a lot more, it could be like a journal entry or a letter or a, anything from Joseph’s Day that we can track to Joseph rather than someone later on telling us their version of what happened. Decades later. It.
[08:35] Peter Brown: Right. And, and I think that most of us aren’t aware of that. If you again going back to that sixth grade or seminary answer, we’re just taught that here’s the story it was given to us by William Clayton, a few of the wives, we just assumed that those stories were contemporaneous and recorded and these people were trusted that uh you know, William Clayton is the boon companion of Joseph Smith, most trusted um advisor. And so why would we have any reason to doubt his, his record or his testimony? And so that’s where, that’s, that’s where I’m sitting when I start upon this question. And, and again, I’ll get I’ll talk to about, I’ll talk to everybody about, you know, where this sort of came to me. Um Once I get through these first few slides because I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna take away from that kind of aha moment, but let’s just at face value at this point. Let’s just say that the most important question to ask is where are the kids? Where are the Children? Um And in, in terms of doing this, I know this question has been asked before, but I, I wanted to look at um uh issues related to fertility rates, DNA studies and look at the years from 1842 to 1846 because that’s when polygamy was being practiced in Nauvoo um with multiple different individuals, including the claims of Joseph Smith. So, uh I wanted to narrow that down because that really paints a really interesting picture to help us scratch our heads and go, this story just doesn’t add up. Um And so we’ll go from there.
[10:15] Michelle: OK. Sounds great. So
[10:17] Peter Brown: I’m gonna just kind of walk through if people aren’t aware and I know your audience is pretty, pretty um educated about this. But for those that are watching it for the first time, we just state some historical kind of facts to just chew on. We, the historical, the historical analysis would say that Joseph had anywhere from 33 to 50 wives depending on the, the sources. Most of those um from 1833 to 1844 are those are the the wives that are claimed um Most of those wives, however, we don’t really see in the record until after his death, the successors claim that he first taught them a polygamy in 1843 which as I’ve gotten into this debate, I realize it doesn’t, that doesn’t always add up. Um because Brigham Young, for example, has a polygamist life in 1842. So, you know, uh I know that you had a uh a podcast a few weeks ago with Jeremy Hoop about this, how um Brigham kind of changes his, uh his testimony depending on the audience. But again, back to my seminary, sort of, you know, 11th, 12th grade, um understanding polygamy was taught the apostles by Joseph Smith in 1843. And uh and then, you know, as you get a little bit deeper into it, you find out, well, you know, he might have known about it since 1831. I mean, no, he really didn’t teach about it publicly. But a revelation from him was produced in 1852 that commanded the principal polygamy that was first allegedly recorded in 1843. That’s something that I don’t think most people going back to that sixth grade understanding really know they’re taught that this is a revelation from 1843. And I thought that was fact,
[12:08] Michelle: they also don’t know that section 101 that directly contradicted, it was removed from the doctrine and covenant. They don’t know that that wasn’t added until 1876 when other sections that that were. Um but that Joseph Smith did add during his lifetime were removed. So it, it is amazing how little we know.
[12:26] Peter Brown: Right. And, and so as I start reading up on some of these issues later on in life. And I’m, I’ve read Bushman’s book and I’ve read, um, uh,
[12:39] Michelle: Mormonism’s
[12:40] Peter Brown: book and I Quinn’s book, I started reading Quinn’s books. So I could kind of get, uh, a more sort of well rounded perspective related to Mormonism and Joseph Smith in general. It was very clear to me that there’s a historical, a very wide historical consensus that he is the author of Mormon Polygamy. And I didn’t have any reason to doubt that I believed it. Um It never really settled well with me, but I just kind of took it at face value for many years and just try to find ways to dance around about the things that didn’t really like a whole lot about it. But again, I didn’t know anything more than he married 30 women or marrying 33 women or marrying 40 women um in Nauvoo um to, to fulfill a commandment from God and possibly that and possibly that his wife didn’t like it. Ok. That’s all I knew. And I still consider myself a pretty astute. Um I’m a, a priest to scholar of Mormonism. Again, I’d read the comprehensive History of the Church. By the time I went on my mission, most missionaries don’t do that. Um But I still didn’t know a whole lot about polygamy.
[13:52] Michelle: So, is it, so what you’re saying is even reading all of the sources about Brigham Young, I mean about Joseph Smith the most, um, you know, scholarly sources. You were left with just a seminary level understanding of his polygamy. That’s really interesting. Ok. Yep.
[14:07] Peter Brown: And, uh, but I found out again just about a decade ago but there was this large sort of R LDS claim out there that, uh goes back 100 100 and 20 100 and 30 years or more now. Uh I would say probably more like 100 and 50 right, 1860 1870 that they believed that Joseph Smith was never polygamist. And this was the first time in my life. I’d encountered the idea that Emma Smith again countering that William Clayton claim. Emma Smith claims publicly from her own lips that her husband was never a polygamist and her son claimed that and her brother-in-law claimed that and that sort of like sent a ripple through me because I was like, why haven’t I ever heard of this? That always frustrates me that those things aren’t sort of um put out in the historical record. Forget whether or not you think that they’re true. If you’re trying to present an honest case, you should at least present the evidence from all sides and walk through it and talk about how it can be difficult to conclude the truth because there is still some controversy surrounding whether or not something was true or not true because there’s different conflicting testimonies and you know, and, and, and let’s not, I guess in my mind, Emma Smith isn’t just one person versus say, like 200 people that say that he was a polygamist. She’s the wife of this man. And from my, from my experience, most women who are scorned by a, a bad husband don’t really feel all that motivated to necessarily come to his defense, especially a, after he’s gone. B she’s remarried and she has a sensible life. She has no, um, motivation to, to protect his reputation at this point. When she starts to talk about how he was faithful to her, she could have been truthful about. It. Wouldn’t have any sort of repercussions come back upon her, either in the community she was living in or in her new marital situation. So it could
[16:22] Michelle: have actually, she was living among people who hated Joseph Smith and she could have maybe had more clout in society and fit in better if she had joined. Yeah, he was a bad guy.
[16:33] Peter Brown: Right. I found that out too later on that, that a lot of the people in the R LDS church, uh, even though they joined the R LDS church and supported the Smith leadership, they really didn’t like Joseph Smith and a lot of them were sort of like, came from the William Locke.
[16:52] Michelle: 00, I did. I was talking more about just the people in, like, living in her surroundings in Navoo. There, there was, they didn’t want, they, like they did, they didn’t start the R LDS church and, and um, people came and asked Joseph the third to take over because it was well established in all of Mormonism that Joseph the third was to be Joseph’s successor and they pushed against it. Right. So if, if they disagreed with what Joseph was doing and they thought he was a bad guy, they had no reason to go join the R LDS church. And Joseph the third did not benefit from it financially at all his entire life, he kept Joseph’s hi, his father’s debts. And anyway, that’s what I think you’re right. I also, I just want to add that Joseph the third as the 11 or 12 year old son and the recognized successor. He was adamant that his father never practiced polygamy. And we have to claim that Joseph Smith is polygamous leader, didn’t groom, his son, didn’t train him up in the highest holiest principle of the gospel of the church that he was destined to take over. And that and, and an 11 year old kid knows what’s happening with their parents to a great extent. If there’s parental discord or anything like that, that child knows. And Joseph the third was always adamant that his parents had a good relationship and I don’t know why he would be motivated to lie, especially before he join the R LDS. So OK, sorry to interrupt you.
[18:14] Peter Brown: I, I’m just pointing out that, uh you know, a lot of the people that they ended up forming a church with that. A lot of those people like Austin cows, um Isaac Sheen, Jason Briggs, these people all believe in the fallen profit narrative and that would have been easier on them if they just would have all gone along with that sort of narrative. But they didn’t, they fought against it, they fought against it amongst their own people. They fought against it with the Utah Mormons. And so I find their testimony is very credible because I don’t see a lot of incentive for them. I mean, I guess there’s this, we want to protect our father’s reputation aspect. But in the terms of their society and the church that they were, they were in and the church that they were leading a lot of the people that stayed behind, a lot of people that didn’t join up with Brigham Young, a lot of them didn’t have the greatest feelings about Joseph’s nau theology. In fact, to the point that when they formed the church, they basically kicked all the Nabu theology out and said, we’re gonna back up to Kirtland 1835 Doctrine, covenants. And that’s what we’re gonna, that’s where we’re gonna stick our, our lines. That’s, we’re gonna stick our, our stake in the ground and we’re gonna leave that theology and we’re going to either assume that Brigham invented everything in Nauvoo or that Joseph uh went Far field and we have to correct. Course. And go back to when the church was true. Which was, you know, 1835.
[19:44] Michelle: Yeah, that’s useful for people to know that the rlvs church did not, um, even follow with any kind of feelings I think. Did they even do baptisms for the dead? I don’t know if they even accepted baptisms for the dead? I think it was just so, they, they rejected everything past that because that’s when things maybe started getting so messy. But anyway, and I know just to tell, I know that there’s a lot of um like I wouldn’t call Isaac Sheen. I don’t think he continued in the fallen profit um narrative. I think there were some mistake, you know, there, there’s a lot of, a lot of, a lot to study there. But I, but your point is well taken what you’re saying so
[20:18] Peter Brown: well, yeah, I mean, a lot of them, a lot of them kind of made peace with Joseph the third. And so that, that helped. But I mean, even Jason Briggs who was one of their apostles, you know, basically, it came to the point where he could excommunicated in the 18 eighties or nineties, I believe because he refused to concede and, you know, decided to go his own way and, and gave up kind of Mormon ideas in general. But that was a big riff between a major leader of their church and the R LDS church. These are things that you know, again, you don’t know about being somebody from Utah who’s grown up in the LDS. I don’t understand. You don’t know this other picture that’s being painted from the other side of the Mississippi. And you also don’t know how there was a real rivalry going on between the two sects at the time. We look back and go, well, we’ve won the war because you’ve got, you know, 16 million Mormons, billions of dollars, trillions of dollars. And the R LDS Church, the community of Christ Church is what I think 200,000 people at this point in time. And it doesn’t, it’s not really in a growth pattern, it just sort of a sustaining pattern and it’s, and so, you know, we look at it and go away in
[21:28] Michelle: a declining pattern. We’ll find out in the upcoming. But the rest.
[21:36] Peter Brown: Yeah. Right. And, and so, so we just don’t, we don’t think we have to study them, their history, but going back to, I think before the 19 twenties or 19 thirties there, the membership numbers were fairly solid on each side and it wasn’t clear which group was gonna sort of like win the sectarian battle between which brand of Mormonism was the right brand of Mormonism. So it’s very, it’s very interesting. And, and so so going back into the polygamy thing, the number one argument that Joseph the third would make and that a lot of earliest apologists would make was that Joseph, his father had no other Children, but those were born to Emma Smith. He didn’t have any brothers and sisters. He didn’t have any, um, kin that came from other mothers other than Emma. And that was a big point that they would point out and talk about for going on 50 years. And it didn’t really change until the 20th century. And you talked about this, I think last time, um, because then people came forward saying, hey, guess what? I’m Joseph Smith’s kid. And that was all testimonial based. But people took it at face value and then found Brodie put it in her book and sort of like solved that puzzle and people thought that that argument had been sort of answered. So that’s where, that’s where it kind of sat for almost 100 years.
[23:08] Michelle: So again, if there are Children, case closed, Joseph was a polygamist and when Fon Brody wrote her book, she included all of the Children. So the assumption was well, case is closed. Now, Joseph was a polygamist because F Brodie included all of these Children again, factually and like she just did it factually
[23:26] Peter Brown: and let’s, let’s point out too. Um If people aren’t aware F’s book was the first real blasi scholarly book to come out on Joseph Smith as a biography and today’s standards still a little bit, it’s, it’s a little bit light on evidence and a lot on conjecture. But for the 19 forties um, it was groundbreaking and earth shattering because everything that had been written before that either came from a very super sort of polemic apologist standpoint from the LDS church or it was sort of a yellow journalist muck breaking book. I mean, you can go back to Mormonism and Veiled, uh, Pomeroy Tucker’s book, Sarah Pratt’s book. They’re all basically like, um, they scandal, they’re scandal novels, essentially.
[24:13] Michelle: It just like, started with John Bennett. John Bennett’s book in 42 was the first of those and they followed in that pattern. Yeah. Yeah, they’re, they’re
[24:21] Peter Brown: written to sell books and to titillate Eastern readers and to, um, uh, sort of scandalize Mormonism that was their whole intent. So now you have someone that comes along and tries to, to play neutral, so to speak, but still has an agenda. In fact, you know, basically a lot of the, the pieces that she quotes a lot of the references that she maintains and puts in her book in relation to this. She takes from those yellow journalist books puts them in as a footnote and all of a sudden it becomes a scholarly fact because she puts it in her book and now people can quote her book and they don’t have to quote EB House Mormonism Unveiled or, or, um, or Lee’s book of the same title. Uh, sorry, the The Mountain Meadows Guy. Also, I forgot his name
[25:12] Michelle: John D Lee. So she gave, she, she served to give credibility to all of these previously not credible claims. Ok. That’s interesting. Ok. So
[25:22] Peter Brown: now we’ve got this sort of scholarly consensus kind of brewing that he was a polygamist and, and that has been that way really since the mid 20th century. But now you’ve got a problem because what happened in the 20 tens and, and, um, well, may I just back up a little bit and point out that the obvious church went through a schism in the two thousands and a lot of it was over its modernizations and it, it changed and it sort of said, well, yeah, Fon Brodie sounds like, you know, Fon Brodie and then Dick Howard and then other scholars came forward from both sides of uh Mormonism and pretty much cemented in everybody’s mind that Joseph Smith was a polygamist and the earliest church wanted to be seen as accepted to academia and accepted to um sensible theological society. And so they decided to adopt ish, I mean, I know, I know there’s no official sort of like take on it, but all of their apologists, all of their big time thinkers and scholars there. I mean, they’re big um historian is John Hamer and he’s firmly in this camp that Joseph was a polygamist and, and Dick Howard as well. Both of them are, are their sort of apologist scholars and they basically a point out it’s, it settled science, it’s settled, it’s settled history and all of a sudden you have the schism in the church. And Richard and Pamela Price wrote the book Joseph Thought Polygamy in 2000 in a sense. Go
[27:10] Michelle: ahead. Oh, I just wanted to, I, I think that the schism actually happened in the eighties and it was actually Joseph’s polygamy wasn’t a big part of that. It was, it was about mainly if it was going to be conservative or extremely liberal. Right. And if it was going to stay Mormon or if it was going to go just fully ecumenical and become more like, really disconnect itself from, from the book of Mormon. And so interestingly, so I just wanted to clarify a couple of things and then the, the Joseph Smith paper, I mean, the Dick Howard’s paper, which did not in any way prove that Joseph was a polygamist. It was not that great. What it did though was say, hey, the R LDS historian thinks that Joseph was a polygamist. That was the scandal. So, like you said, and the thing I want to clarify also is that, so it’s interesting because the LDS church claims that Joseph was a polygamist but that God wanted him to and it was from God, right? The R LDS church now doesn’t take a stand. But those people, you mentioned Dick Howard, John Hamer and the leaders, I think Vey say Joseph was a polygamist, but it’s because he was a bad guy, you know, like they really have separated themselves.
[28:14] Peter Brown: He’s flawed. He, he was a, you know, he’s a flawed man, a fallen prophet. Um,
[28:20] Michelle: right. If they believe, I don’t even think they think he was a prophet. Now. I think that they just think he was, you know, they’re more in the fond brody camp somehow. It seems to me, I guess we could ask them. And so now it’s interesting, a
[28:32] Peter Brown: lot of them tried to thread the needle. Um, my wife and I did attend an R LDS church or a community of Christ church. Women lived in California occasionally and the pastor of their church, they have pastors, um, hadn’t even read the book of Mormon, hadn’t even studied the book of Mormon. They don’t even know about Mormon beliefs. They, they teach sort of, uh uh sort of a quasi Unitarian Universalist theology. We sort of focus on that. And so,
[29:01] Michelle: yeah. So, anyway, so, thanks for that. So, we
[29:04] Peter Brown: accelerated in the year 2000 because that’s when they changed their name, they changed their name and they reorganize our church is Christ of Latter Day Saints to the community of Christ church. And they really accelerated sort of that differentiation. And that’s when the big schism happened. That’s when um you have the Remnant R LDS church. Um Some of the other offshoots in Missouri, anybody who ever goes back to Missouri and drives around independence or just drives around Jackson County, Clay County all the way up to g, you’ll see these, like, you’ll see a sort of independent sort of r les churches that are, that are proper. I think they call
[29:42] Michelle: themselves, I think they call themselves restoration branches. I just did a great interview on this that I’ll release next week so that people can catch up on this. So, yeah, that you’ll see the, the community of Christ or the restoration branch churches. Right. Like,
[29:57] Peter Brown: and, and the reason I want to point this out though is because it was, in my opinion, it was the prices book that basically went back to Joseph Joseph Smith the third. They pulled all the old tracks, all the old um arguments and they rewrote it or updated it for a 21st century audience. And in doing so, it’s sort of a lot of people had exposure to these arguments for the first time. Again, Joseph actually preached publicly against polygamy. I never knew that Joseph didn’t have any Children. I never knew that. And you started seeing it being picked up in, you know, on the internet. And then you start seeing what they were doing was these DNA analysis, Hugo Perego was doing these DNA studies related to the, the claims of these Children that uh brody had written about. And, and again, people say, well, not all of them have been tested. I actually haven’t looked into that to whether every single one have been tested, but enough have been tested that you know, if, if eight of the, you know, 16 people who said they were Joseph’s kids were tested and they’ve all come back as a negative. It, it sort of framed the idea that, that this testimonial evidence of these people that said they were Joseph’s kids isn’t reliable.
[31:18] Michelle: Ok. And a couple of things to clarify on that as well, the very best cases have been tested and, and, and we have, we would have to do some research to get to every single claim because I don’t think most of them were the kid claiming it. Do you know, like I’m Joseph Pitt, I think someone was like, well, it could be that could be one of the child they’re trying to speculate and find. But my understanding is that every best case scenario um like, like at the strongest claims to being Joseph’s Children have all been proven false. So if we want to say, well, none of the best claims were, but maybe some of those already recognize all those really weak claims might be like v brody claims that there were Children who were conceived a year or more after Joseph died. We don’t need to do DNA on that. You know, like I think we can safely say Joseph did not have Children with his polygamous. W so OK. And,
[32:13] Peter Brown: and so just to kind of bring this home with this slide, I think a lot of people who are adopting this view that perhaps Joseph wasn’t a polygamist are just responding to the science. I don’t really know if there’s a theology out there other than, you know, the art, there’s some, you know, R LDS break offs. But people in the Utah region, I don’t know that it’s in their best interest to adopt a viewpoint that Joseph Smith wasn’t a polygamist and it certainly doesn’t make them, um, any more friendly with the LDS church. And so I think that a lot of people initially early on were just following the science. That’s how it was with me when I, when I heard about Hugo Pero’s work and I had read what Joseph had actually done back in Nauvoo with preaching against polygamy and the fact that there were no Children, it just, it just started, things just start toppling over on my shelf in relation to this idea that he had to be a polygamist because of something that William Clayton wrote about Lucy Walker in his journal. OK. The dynamic for me because this was science responding to something that was written down in a journal. And so that’s where we’re at on uh on this. I, I feel like the, the initially a lot of efforts were just, this is us trying to follow it’s a scientific um arch and if we can find a kid, I think that solves the, the question. But so far we haven’t been able to find a kid. So I think that the trajectory of where the science is taking us is in a direction that he was never a polygamist.
[33:47] Michelle: I OK. I completely agree with you. I think the point I’ve repeatedly made is that the more information we get, the stronger the case becomes that he was never a polygamist. If, if DNA evidence came about, it should be that we’re discovering more and more Children that we didn’t even know about. Right? If he had been a polym, instead, DNA is doing the exact opposite and, and the more sources we get, the more clear the picture becomes of the fraud that was per perpetrated against him. So OK, continue. OK.
[34:13] Peter Brown: So now we’re gonna walk through some facts um on this physical evidence just to help us get a baseline here, Joseph and Emma Smith born nine Children, 52, live to adulthood. I want to point out there’s no fertility problems. Um having child or infant mortality was a pretty typical problem in the uh early to mid eight, you know, mid 19th century. If your child doesn’t live to adulthood, that’s not a problem of fertility. It’s a problem of infant mortality. So claims about him having a fertility problem, I think fall short here.
[34:49] Michelle: OK. That’s great. So you’re talking about the claim that I played the clip of last week that Joseph didn’t have strong swimmers that Lindsay Hanson Park made, which I think is, is insane. So, yes, I would like to see what information she has if she has any. Exactly what you said. I actually found several studies that I’ll link below just for anyone that needs them to show that infant mortality has nothing to do with um fertility. They are not at all related. There is no connection between even chromosomal issues and fertility or like you, you can’t say that, oh, Joseph had these, well, really only three Children died um at birth, right. Don Carlos died, I guess four Children died at birth. You’ll have to remind me. So they lost Alvin their first baby, then they lost their twins and twins are always high risk, right? And so I think, I think Alvin
[35:46] Peter Brown: twins and one of those died.
[35:48] Michelle: Right. Right. But I’m only looking at their genetic Children. So all then it sounds to me like had a chromosomal issue which happens, right? Does not have necessarily anything to do with Joseph. Um Then the twins high risk could have been premature short according to Brian, I need to de Michael Quinn, who knows? Right. And then they lost Don Carlos to malaria at a year and a half, which how they’re trying to make that claim and then they had one more still stillborn. So that has nothing to do with jo fertility or with Joseph’s ability to give birth to my Children. I think that’s important to say. And I did look at the um the the infant mortality rate in 1930 which is when they lost, they lost their first child in 28. And I think they’re twins in 1830 1830. If I didn’t say it, it was at about 45%. 440
[36:39] Peter Brown: I thought it was 30%.
[36:42] Michelle: No, I just looked it up. I’ll, I’ll put this link below. Maybe my son could even put it in for us in the presentation. But in, in, from the stats that I found um in 18 3400 and 48 Children out of 1000 died before the age of five. And so, so actually Emma and Joseph to some extent, were beating those terrible odds because they had five live and four die if I mean, if I’m remembering correctly. So anyway, I just wanted to point out how ridiculous that claim is and the fact that it was made in my mind shows how desperate they have become to find any way to explain this problem away. So, hey, continue. Yeah,
[37:21] Peter Brown: I just wanna say in this day and age anybody I know who is, who any who sires nine Children doesn’t have fertility
[37:27] Michelle: problems. Exactly. Yes, thank you.
[37:31] Peter Brown: OK. And there are no known Children for Joseph with enemies that are wives. Um You know, my estimate is around 30 who are, who are of the age of fertility, 10 of which have strong claims of conjugal relations. That’s Brian Hill’s um there who’s claim who makes those claims. Um Others make stronger claims, I believe. Um talk about that in a minute. But uh so we do have wives that are fertile that had Children after Joseph Smith died and they remarried. And so it wasn’t like they had fertility issues. So, so we gotta find other reasons. Third, the most believing claim opportunity this dismissed by DNA testing you. We talked about that already. But the other, the other fact that was left out of the uh RFM podcast was that there are other men practicing polygamy in NAVOO that had Children with their polygamous wives between the years of 1844 and 1846 after Joseph died and before they went west to Utah, and we’ll, we’ll get into that a little bit later because this is the, this was the key kind of evidence piece for me that flipped me that flipped me completely. Was this one right here? So the next slide, let’s go through these men. These are the men that had polygamous Children. Brigham Young was married to four wives and Navoo Lucy Decker in 42 Augusta Adams in 43 Harriet Cook and 43 Clarissa Decker in 44. All prior to Joseph’s death. Now he married 50 more after Joseph’s death, the lion’s share of those before he left in 46 by the way, not in Utah, which I find very, very odd and interesting if it was such a scary place to be a polygamist and you’re planning on why not? Wait. Um possibly one child born before 1844. And this is something I did some research on. I went and looked it up. So Augusta Adam Adams have had um a child named Brigham that was born in 1838 and he died in 1843. And then there’s another story about a baby who was born on her way, emigrating from New England to Nauvoo in 1843 who died en route. And so I don’t know if it’s the same person. So
[39:51] Michelle: also named Brigham, right? That was also,
[39:54] Peter Brown: and II, I looked at that that came from a family search. Um uh research, in fact, just want to say most of this I did came from um uh George A Smith’s piece in dialogue on Mormon demographics. And then I was also doing primary research in Mormon or in a family search to see what people had listed in their ancestry and full disclosure. I know it’s not super scholarly that there’s some errors in there. But if it uh you know, for all intents and purposes for this argument, we can take it at face five because it doesn’t really change if I’ve got a date wrong here or there or a child off here or there. It um it doesn’t really matter to the end result of the discussion,
[40:41] Michelle: right? It also is the best information we have and they usually will link whatever documentation there is. So we can still
[40:49] Peter Brown: or gravestone. Um in this case, 38 was just a county in a city and uh and in uh in uh New England and that was it. So there’s more to be, there’s more to look at there because that could really change the narrative. We find that there was a uh a Brigham Young Cobb that Brigham Young Cobb that died in 1843 was five instead of a newborn that would change the story just a little bit. He was a success. But
[41:20] Michelle: we do, we do know that Augusta left her husband for Brigham and came with him and had a child or maybe two Children depending on this confusion named Brigham. And, and so so there is there is this confused that and both of them or if it was just one or if there were two sons named Brigham, they both died. And so it is very,
[41:45] Peter Brown: we have a possible child of polygamy prior to Joseph’s death, which we don’t have very many of. But that those are just some facts we wanna lay on the table here because it’s important to our discussion.
[41:57] Michelle: OK. He,
[41:58] Peter Brown: he married 35 additional wives in NAVOO. Uh Many had also been allegedly married to Joseph Smith, which makes it kind of interesting
[42:09] Michelle: which just to clarify only, only according to later stories, there’s no evidence for that. We can we know for a fact that Brigham was married to them in Nua. We have plenty of evidence for that. We have none other than in fact,
[42:22] Peter Brown: what I’ve seen if you’re looking for primary or contemporaneous documentation of, of, of, of links to a marriage to Joseph Smith, the earliest source you can usually find are the temple records from 1846 nau where, you know, a lot of times these men would stand in proxy and be married to somebody for time. And then they would say, well, I’m standing in place of Joseph Smith to be married to you for eternity. And you’re going, wait a minute. Weren’t these women already sealed like two or three years ago? So why are they being resealed again? So that’s something that, that sort of again, another domino falls. I’m like, this doesn’t make any sense. So, unless you’re trying to reframe the ordinance in a way that supports your new idea. That to me, it seems like the most logical choice as to why you would do that is that you’ve got a whole new system you want to install. And so you need to reframe what had happened to you earlier as a marriage. So,
[43:22] Michelle: ok, let’s go. Ok. Interesting. And also just to just to clarify, I know we’re hurrying but they, they said they were sealed for time and we talked about what in the world does that mean? Because sealing means eternal past this life, right? So sealed for time and then resealed to Joseph Smith. All of that is highly problematic and that’s the best evidence we have for Joseph’s polygamy. So OK, continue on.
[43:44] Peter Brown: So, so this is the business. This is man, this is man, number one. So Hebrew Kimball, um married plug first plugs, wife is Sarah Pek Noon or Sara Peak. I can’t remember who was in Sara Pek noon or Sara Peak uh before Jo Smith died, did that in 42. And I think you’ve talked about this before, but he bore a son, Adelbert who died a year later in 1842. So which is interesting because you hear you have AAA child who died infant mortality issue, we can find Hebrew Kimball’s kid, but we can’t find a uh a child of Joseph that he might have had with a polygamist wife that had in it who died in infancy. Um So I mean, obviously we can capture Hebrews. So I don’t know we can’t capture Joseph’s. He married fortunately. Well, he was in
[44:33] Michelle: Nauvoo. I I was thinking that Edelberg and Sarah PK noon were um William Clayton’s, am I mixed up?
[44:41] Peter Brown: Um No, it’s, it’s keeper Kimball uh William Clayton was Margaret Moon. Ok. But where I get confused, I think her name is Sarah Peak Noon. I get that mixed up Margaret Moon and Ruth Moon who were the wives of William Clayton. Sarah Peak Moon
[45:00] Michelle: was ok. Yeah,
[45:03] Peter Brown: I think, and I, I don’t know if n became uh I can’t remember. I just put Sarah Pek in there. I think that was her maiden name. She married 14 additional wives while living in Navoo. And for five Children before he left Illinois and we talked about this before he might, he might have had some possible affairs in England. Recorded his personal journal in 1840. We, you went through that with uh Jeremy. You need to know this, ok? For this whole discussion. Ok. We’re Richards, we’re Richards. Um Possibly someone pointed out. I probably ought to like, not be so certain on this. His uh so called affair with Marinda Hyde. I don’t know if you’ve talked about the story where he, um he kicked Ebenezer Robinson out of the Times and Seasons office and essentially took over as the editor and there’s a story of him like swooping Marinda Hyde into there to make it his love nest and he runs out in the street and shoots off a gun in the street to, to celebrate his conquest. That’s a late recollection from like the 18 eighties or 18 nineties. So in, so let’s just, if we’re gonna be fair to, you know, the other side, we, we say that there’s a lot of the recollections about Jo Smith polygamy come late. I don’t want to necessarily throw him under the bus on this, but there is this claim for what it’s worth, it’s there, you know, put it into your, um, understanding of this maybe a little bit. Uh, we do know that he did marry Sarah Longs and Susan and Lee in 1843 and then married five other women after 1844. While living in Navoo, he fathered 27 Children with 14 of his wives, but none in NAVOO. Um, he’s also a witness to the murder of Joseph and Arms Smith
[46:47] Michelle: and I know you’re gonna get to this. But I hope people are paying attention to the numbers. Each of these men maybe bring him a few more, but they have maybe one or two wives before Joseph died, right? As soon as Joseph, yeah. As
[47:01] Peter Brown: soon as Joseph died, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, they everything
[47:05] Michelle: happen. Yeah. And, and I think,
[47:08] Peter Brown: I think as, um I think September 1844 was when it really picked up and I didn’t, I didn’t done in this is in this presentation to show the dates of when um he, they, they married all of these women. But I have seen a scatter plot graph of that in other presentations where it’s just kind of dribbles over time from 1842 to 1844. And then in September of 44 it just, it just blooms and blossoms.
[47:39] Michelle: Ok. I’ll see if I can find that. So, yes. So that’s a good thing to pay attention to because all of our excuses about Joseph Smith were based on the conditions in Nauvoo, they’re still in Nauvoo in all of the n, in
[47:52] Peter Brown: some respect, worse, they have a relationship with Governor Tom Ford. Um,
[47:59] Michelle: they’re being actively chased out there. The one
[48:02] Peter Brown: thing, well, there’s, there’s basically they’re negotiating an exodus. And so on one hand, I feel like that, that they’ve been given clemency from the state. Um, but that wasn’t a very, it was a very loosely enforced and there was a lot of problems with it and, and the big issue in NAVOO post 1844 was counterfeit, counterfeiting and uh bogus making and those charges were um being leveled against the apostles. And so they were under threats. So if something like polygamy was added on top of that, it would just exacerbate the situation. One is William Clayton. William Clayton married Margaret Moon on April 27th, 1843. Again before the martyrdom, they had one child in February of 1844 that died six months later and possibly one from an affair in England that, that you see floating around. Um unsure about that, but you know, at least be aware of that, that, that uh that rumor. He then married Alison Jane Hartman in late 1844 and Diana in 1845 and two Children born after 1844 before the move West. He was a key figure in recording justice polygamy and NAVOO. And um again, possible affairs in England with um Sarah Crooks recorded in his journal in 1840 we talked about that and Bs. But again, that’s the picture of him as a polygamist.
[49:34] Michelle: OK. So this is the demographics of William Clayton. This one is essential because again, it is like you just said, it’s William Clayton that all of the narrative of Joseph receiving 132. And Joseph’s polygamy hangs on. He is one who did have a child perhaps too during Joseph’s lifetime before Joseph’s death. And then several right after that is so critically important to know for everyone to recognize that William Clayton was a dedicated polygamist who fathered polygamous Children before Joseph’s death. Ok.
[50:08] Peter Brown: Um Joseph Bates Noble uh Novo era polygamy. He is important because he’s the one that, you know, John Bennett said uh married Joseph to Louisa Beaman. He, he married Sarah Alley and Mary Ann was Ford in 1843. And then he is another one that bore a child George Noble figure of 1844 and then bore another child in Nauvoo for heading west. So he’s an important figure because again, he’s embroiled as somebody who stood in and married Joseph to other other wives. Um My uh my thought or my theory is that the Louisa Beaman information that gets passed to John Bennett came from Joseph Bates Noble to Willard uh to uh to uh John Bennett. But again, this is just a showcase that he was a, again, here’s another polygamist that you see in Nabu who’s very important. You see him on a lot of records related to Nabu polygamy and Joseph’s polygamy.
[51:10] Michelle: OK. So that is the possibility that I, I had tried to say this in my one episode that there could have been some people in league with John Bennett with this commonality they had of spiritual wifey slash polygamy. And so Joseph Bates Noble, your hy hypothesizing is that is a possibility right there. So, OK.
[51:29] Peter Brown: so, so now you have Thomas Bullock. Thomas Bullock is another scribe of Joseph Smith. Some of there’s a couple of wives um that he records in, you know, his writings. I think he’s the one that was the key figure to record that Joseph was sealed to Nancy Hyde, the same Nancy Hyde that um allegedly Willard Richards took to his love Den in the Times and Seasons Office. He’s the one that records that in a journal. He, he’s also the one that I think he, he records some of the information related to Hiram’s April 1844 speech where he talks about ringing the noses of the men who are preaching polygamy. And he talks about his ceiling situation with his dead wife and his living wife. And I remember had an argument with somebody online about this that uh I wonder if the recordings that he made were um uh if there’s any sort of a presentation on his part? And the retort was, well, he wasn’t a polygamist in Nauvoo until after Joseph Smith died. Incorrect, he was 1843. He’s a,
[52:43] Michelle: so let’s tell that story really fast because it’s so interesting. Some of my listeners will know about this. Hiram Smith gave an impassioned address on April 8th, 1844. Correct. Where he was. It is, it’s the strongest speech I’ve read against polygamy even as recorded by, um, Thomas Bullock and, um, but in the Joseph
[53:04] Peter Brown: Smith papers,
[53:05] Michelle: yes, that’s what I was going to say. So to, to, to show how honest these people sometimes weren’t. Well, first of all, in the Thomas Bullock version, it’s somewhat ambi ambiguous whether Joseph, I mean, whether Hiram people could read into it either way, whether he was sealed to Mary fielding, it’s very much most likely that he wasn’t right because it had to be done later again and, and several other reasons. But he
[53:28] Peter Brown: got, he got, uh because uh she got sealed to Hiram by um Hebrew Kimball as
[53:36] Michelle: posthumously. Right. Right. And, and so, and then also, and there are other other problems with it too that I won’t go into. But what’s so fascinating is William Clayton also recorded that entire conference but omitted Hyrum speech. So he was, he didn’t even record it. We can still get. And then later on when they were preparing church history, they completely changed Hyrum speech to prepare it for church history before they decided even the changes weren’t good enough and they would um omit it from the church history. So that speech has been changed multiple times even now, up until just a few months ago, Thomas Bullock’s version, the original has been removed from the Joseph Smith papers and all we can get are William Clayton’s recordings of that conference and then the edited version of Thomas Bullock’s speech that was prepared for the church history and they’re presenting those things as the original. So to claim that this polygamist in Navoo might have altered that a little bit to, to make, to fudge that jo that Hiram could have been sealed to Mary fielding, which is exactly the changes that continued on to happen is completely plausible and is still happening to this day. It’s fascinating. So this is a really interesting one. Ok.
[54:51] Peter Brown: Yeah, definitely. We have concluded that Mr Thomas Bullock was a polygamist before Joseph Smith died and could therefore be motivated to, let’s say, you know, fudge some things. So the next one is um where are we, why won’t it go forward? All right, Theodore Turley. Uh This one’s interesting. He’s the first polygamist on record after Joseph Smith before Brigham Young, even um at least on record and he is the one who married all sisters. He married Mary Elizabeth and Sarah Cliff. So he first married, he married Mary in 1842 and then he married Sarah and Eliza in 1844. Um This is an interesting story because this sort of runs counter to the narrative that William Clayton gave where he told, I don’t know it was Flora. Was it Flora that he told? I can’t.
[55:52] Michelle: He said Lydia was the third.
[55:53] Peter Brown: Oh, you know, he told William Clayton that he couldn’t marry three sisters, right?
[55:57] Michelle: Just right. This, this the story that we have is that he was married to Sarah and Margaret and he wanted to marry Lydia. But Joseph said you can only marry two sisters. And then, and then the claim is that Joseph wanted to marry Lydia. There is more information forthcoming on that where actually we have evidence that Lydia spurned William Clayton and refused to get involved with him. And thus comes the story of Joseph saying you can only have two to satisfy his ego while anyway. And you’re exactly right that Theodore Turley here has three sisters. So I have three
[56:30] Peter Brown: sisters. He bore a child in 1842 and then he fathered eight additional Children while in NAU. So he’s one of the more prolific child bearers of the NAU era, which is funny because he’s not really part of the, the cabal, so to speak. You don’t see him involved with a lot of the scribal ins and outs and he’s not involved in the narrative of polygamy. So he’s kind of someone I wanna spend some time looking into to see what his role was when in all of this. Um He just seems to be kind of a quite unsung guy.
[57:06] Michelle: That’s interesting. I guess he was too busy fathering Children to really be involved in all the shenanigans. Ok. But I
[57:12] Peter Brown: also recognize too because they were all sisters, he might have been able to more easily hide his polygamy. So, and then John Taylor, he kind of comes to it late in the game. Um, he marries Elizabeth Kagan and Jane Ballantyne before the death of Joseph Smith. I mean, we’re talking like December, February, I believe of 1840 December of 80 of 43. Um And then February of 1844. And then he married eight other women after 1844 while still living in Nauvoo and fathered two additional Children before going west. And again, he was a witness to the murder of Joseph and Hire and who was wounded in the crossfire. So he’s there where all this is going on. Um Anyway, just, just curious, a curious piece of information to think about. All right. So now we’ve gone through the, uh the gentlemen that were involved in polygamy during Nauvoo and their demographics, a little reality check. Uh One of the things that we are constantly told in the church is that the followers of Joseph Smith essentially were just practicing and implementing his pattern that he established and told them in 1843. And, uh and so, is that, is that really true or is that not true? And again, we walked through all the facts we know that Joseph didn’t have any Children. All these other men did have Children. Here is a summary of, of all of the um the Children. Here’s a summary of the, the, the, the Nabu era Children. And then in green are, you’ve got Children that were born before 1844. I need to include Theodore Turley in there because I didn’t, I didn’t uh have that highlighted. He should also be in green. But you’ve got essentially five people there that have Children before 1844 Joseph has no Children that we know of. And then you have all these other men who sired Children in 40 in 44 48 Children born in Navoo.
[59:24] Michelle: OK. So we need to break this down a little. Do you, do you want me to go or are you gonna go?
[59:30] Peter Brown: So this to me is the, this I just wanted, this was my sort of um my aha moment. This is where I flipped. My, my belief is when I came to recognize that there was this big of a difference between um uh So, so this slide and the next slide, the differences between Joseph Smith and his successors, Joseph had no Children, but his successors and followers wore many Children after Joseph’s step in many before they even left Nauvoo. Uh The, the different types of marriages that we have in the historical record, supposedly, Joseph marries um women that are already married but in, um, his successors and followers, they either married virgins or widows or they got someone to divorce or leave their husbands and then come marry them. But the, yeah, but
[1:00:28] Michelle: they weren’t polyandrous. Ok. It wasn’t polyandrous. They weren’t married to both men at the same time. All right.
[1:00:34] Peter Brown: Like in Joseph’s situations, if he married a woman who was already married, she didn’t leave her husband. Right. For all intents and purposes. And most people don’t dispute this. They were ceremonial. I mean, that’s at least the halls point of view that they were ceremonial in nature, but not so with his followers, with his followers. It was, it was a trade up system. So if you found a mate who had hier keys or somebody who would protect you better, you could leave your current husband and, or go and marry the, the husband who had greater authority. Um, Joseph Smith did not create households with his wives. You know, the, the only exception is he had a few quote unquote wives who lived as foster daughters and nannies. But that’s disputed because they were his foster daughters and nannies. So
[1:01:25] Michelle: were they, he wasn’t setting up a house? Yeah, he wasn’t setting up a household with them. Right. Ok.
[1:01:31] Peter Brown: Right. And um, but his followers created households with, with their wives. Um, they were either separated and they just would move around or they would move him into the same household. The same household thing didn’t really largely happen until they got to the Utah period. So they would, they basically had separated households. Um And I know during the winter quarters era that that was a little more fuzzy because of traveling over land. Um But the point is is that every woman is kind of seen as she has her own domicile with her own Children. And the man kind of goes around his route and, and visit each one of his, his households. OK. This polygamy was seen in terms of fill, fulfilling a spiritual commandment, even if he had sexual relations with it, the LDS church’s view, it’s still that it was more of a, a spiritual fulfilling of, of doing something. The Lord asked him to do, you know whether it’s a flaming sword or whether it’s something that he prayed about and got a revelation on he was trying to fulfill some sort of spiritual commandment. But Brigham and company look at polygamy in terms of a temporal commandment, they’re raising up seed. Um They’re spreading Israel through this sort of um action. And uh and, and so the between the last slide in this one is where I came to believe that um Joseph Smith wasn’t a polygamist.
[1:03:01] Michelle: Yeah. Can you go back to the last one for just a minute? I will go back to the last one. OK? Because the thing I also want to point out is that the earliest any of these men took additional wives was usually 43 maybe 42 and maybe it’s some shenanigans in England. Right. But they had maybe one other wife and maybe one year and they fathered Children. We claim that Joseph had over 10 years or, you know, like really if we want to do the 1833 if we want to claim, um, Fanny Alger as a wife, which is universally done by those who accused Joseph of polygamy. We have to go back at least to 1833 ish, right? And all of that time with 30 wives, not one or two for a decade and didn’t father a single child. That is amazing. That’s profoundly important to recognize only amazing.
[1:03:54] Peter Brown: And when I came to understand this in 2015, it was right after I had read the Joseph Smith’s monogamy paper um that uh that came out to me, it was groundbreaking, it was earth shattering, it was scholarly put together. And when I read through that again, it was like, why don’t I know about this stuff? Why isn’t this presented in any historical context from either es historians or um post LDS or non LDS or anti LDS historians? Why don’t they talk about this? It just is completely absent from the historical record. And before I got to this, so I had been investigating polygamy to try to figure out what I believed about it because 132 had never really sat Well, with me, even growing up there were pieces of it that I, I, you know, sort of clung to dealing with ceilings and, and how contracts need to be, um, um, enforced by the, by the law of heaven if they want to be, if they want to last into eternity, that all made sense. That was fine. That’s what I was taught about what my marriage was, my ceiling essentially was. But as you get deeper into it, it gets icky. And so I always struggled with it and so put it on the shelf but came to a point in 2015 that I couldn’t do that any longer. I needed to decide what I really believed was true about the practice. And I came basically to the same, um, the same conclusion you did in relation to whether it was good or not. And I concluded that it wasn’t good. At least the nau version of it wasn’t good. I was still, you know, in terms of biblical polygamy was I OK with Abraham having multiple wives or Jacob having multiple wives? Sure. You know, um That didn’t bother me that, you know, I, in my mind now I look at that as this was a, um, these were men that were living as products of their time, um, that similar to the fact that they were all shepherds and raised sheep and were nomadic. That’s, it
[1:06:13] Michelle: was a cultural practice, not a divine command doing the
[1:06:17] Peter Brown: works of Abraham wasn’t marrying multiple wives, doing the works of Abraham was um, setting ties to
[1:06:25] Michelle: with God, with
[1:06:26] Peter Brown: God and being willing to do everything God asked him to do and repenting and being able to receive the blessings of the fathers. Um, from, from Adam down to Noah. And he’s able to get that because of his righteousness, not because he married a concubine or Sarah said, go there was my concubine so we can have seed. And so and in my personal life so that the, the individuals watching this are aware, my wife and I have struggled with fertility. We got married in 2007 and have been really struggling trying to have Children. And so trying to understand the dynamics of polygamy and how polygamy would fit into that sort of a situation. The Abraham story was always a little bit sort of interesting to us because we would go well, is that something that we could do in our lives if we wanted to have Children, if we can have Children? Um So we would just sort of like flirt with the idea here and there. I remember that we started watching a sister wives program on TLC. And initially, we were kind of curious and kind of wondering if that is something that would work out for us. If it is. If, if people are familiar with the, the show Mary, the first wife of Cody Brown, she’s, she only, she only had one child. She couldn’t have any more. She, they had infertility problems. And
[1:07:47] Michelle: so, oh, I didn’t know that. So,
[1:07:48] Peter Brown: Mary, in some respects inherits this large family that she can mother other Children and kind of get that satiation for being a mother. And there was a little bit of a draw to that. Now, if you watch the series now, pretty much, it’s a, it’s a train wreck. Everybody’s left Cody. It’s, it’s ridiculous. But back in, excuse me, back in 2000 and um and her 11 when the, when the show first started, um it was appealing and so we thought through it, but by 2015, I had come to conclude, there was something wrong about the practice. There was something that just didn’t feel right about it. And so I had to make a decision about what I believed. And I came to the idea that polygamy novo polygamy was wrong, it was bad. And that if Joseph was the author of it, then he was misguided and he was mistaken. And in fact, when I read D Michael Quinn’s book, Origins of Power, D Michael Quinn’s great because he just sort of writes books and throws all of the details out there. He doesn’t really get into narrative too much. But if there is a narrative that he portrays in that book, it’s that Joseph implements polygamy and then sort of regrets it and goes and confesses that to to William Marks and ig lumped on to that. I’m like, yes, that makes sense to me because, because now I can believe maybe he made a mistake and then he repented of it and came back to the Lord and um it’s very, and maybe the Lord had to kill him because, you know, um because of this great mistake that he made, but that doesn’t make Mormonism wrong or bad or, or um, I, I can live with that and I can, I can make peace with that. So that’s where I was and I was completely happy with that. And then all this information comes out and it completely provides a new perspective that I could look at that. I couldn’t even contemplate for because I didn’t know the, the facts behind it.
[1:09:49] Michelle: Yeah. So interesting. And I shared that perspective. That was my last perspective too. Was the hearing the William Marks quote. That’s a big one for, you know, that makes it think like, ok, he got messed up. He got mixed up in it to some degree. But you know, that that’s what I believed for a long time as well until this kind of evidence. It wasn’t the, it wasn’t these same bits for me. It was studying Emma her life that convinced me. But this is profoundly convincing. I can see why this convinced you. I hope it has the same effect on other people as well. Yeah, I mean,
[1:10:21] Peter Brown: this, this chart here alone. It just speaks volumes and I, I could sit and stare at it for an hour and go,
[1:10:28] Michelle: it doesn’t make in the world, in the
[1:10:30] Peter Brown: world there’s, there’s, uh, one of these things is not like the other. Um Right. So, anyway, so that’s, that’s where we’re at. We’ve talked about the differences. These are facts, by the way, things that we can dispute, everybody can look at this and go. These are the differences between Joseph Smith’s polygamy and Brigham Young’s polygamy. So one of the questions that people or one of the things that people will talk about and say, but we really don’t know if we haven’t, we haven’t captured all of the, the possible Children of Joseph Smith. There might be Children out there that we don’t know about. And OK, that’s, that’s, that’s plausible. But I started looking into this and like you mentioned on the prior um episode, Brian Hill Snow is the one who points out that the incentive to find Children of Joseph would have been immense and anybody who knows anything about succession in the church, who knows that Brigham Young was looking for an heir to Joseph Smith to essentially lead the church that he would groom and then put forward. And because the Smith brothers, the Smith sons from, from Missouri weren’t or Illinois at the time weren’t, um We’re gonna take up the reins, they would do anything to find an error or proof that he was a polygamist, especially post 1870 when there is this huge fight between the two churches and then all the legal issues related to the church’s ownership of the doctrine that, that um
[1:12:00] Michelle: the temple case,
[1:12:02] Peter Brown: they would have loved to have been able to prove to judge Phillips about some errors. And so it really, the incentive is, is pretty strong. So, you know, we do have F Brody’s published list, but it was proved, you know, it was proved that the best cases were proved um BS um that they weren’t uh offspring of Joseph and including the most famous case of Josephine Lyons, which I remember when, when the first DNA um discussions were, were had and they were only looking at the male heirs of Joseph Smith that people kept saying, well, we can’t look at women yet. We don’t have the technology to look at all of the daughters of Joseph Smith. And the most famous case is Josephine lines because of her mother’s deathbed confession that she was the daughter of Joseph Smith. And so people were holding on to that one going. This is our um smoking gun. This is the child that we can prove. And then when the case came out that she wasn’t, there was like crickets for a while. Nobody could really reconcile that that was something they had really glum on to as one of their talking points. And it wasn’t until just recently that I’ve seen how they basically said that she’s, and so sorry, I’m, I’m getting dried. Probably should get some water that she’s been, um, because she was having conjugal relationships with multiple men. Joseph and her husband and that, you know, she’s, she didn’t know. Um, again, the historic record doesn’t, doesn’t show that even among those who believe Joseph was having sex with his wives, it wasn’t with the, um, the wives of other men. He wasn’t doing that with his quote unquote polyandrous wives that was with his young, you know, younger wives.
[1:13:49] Michelle: It, well, it’s been interesting to see how they both redid their narratives. Like I said, there are two different narratives, right? Because we’re fighting on two friends, the church narrative, the Brian Hills narrative and then the anti Joseph anti Mormon narrative and the Brian Hills narrative. He had to because he was very adamant. He was very sure that Josephine was Joseph’s daughter. So that really threw him for a loop and he rewrote his narrative to say that Joseph wasn’t sleeping with any of the polyandrous wives. And that Joseph and that Sylvia Josephine’s mother would have seen it as a eternal, see as some sort of a spiritual well, right? Like she was a spiritual child. It’s not a spiritual wifey, but she was a spiritual child, right? So that’s, that’s his new claim. And then the new claim of the um anti Joseph is that these women were sleeping with both husbands. I’ve even had. Yeah, like I’ve mentioned before, Dan Vogel said case closed. She didn’t know whose father, who, who the father was. That is not what her confession was. That is not what she would want anyone to believe. So that’s completely speculative. And I think it goes against the historical narrative. So OK, continue.
[1:14:52] Peter Brown: Yeah, I think we can conclude with a reasonable assertion that um it’s unlikely we’re going to find any offspring of Joseph Smith Junior at this point. I think, I think, I think this, if you want to say there’s a case closed, this is a case closed. We’re not gonna try to, aside from uh maybe there’s a new way to test some DNA and one of the, the claims especially of the daughters that we can test, uh maybe there’s a method out there, maybe there’s a lost child that we’re not aware of that we can find, I just don’t see it happening, but I
[1:15:29] Michelle: know I kind of want to say and maybe we will discover like a genie in a lamp. Anything is possible, right? It’s what is likely. And I would say that that’s about as likely at this point as finding a genie in a lamp. And even Brian Hales admits it’s not gonna happen, it’s not gonna happen. OK? We have eliminated all the best cases. So it’s not, Joseph’s
[1:15:48] Peter Brown: not gonna have any kids. OK? It’s not right. So, so there are some interesting. There are some interesting, um, points that people try to make as to why Joseph didn’t have any Children in his polygamous marriages, but everybody else did. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna walk through the rest of the presentation on these eight points here. Um, and so I’m just gonna go over them briefly and then we’ll go to them in depth. So, number one is legal issues. You know, that’s a big point that, that, uh Joseph F Smith would say was that it was illegal. He didn’t wanna get in trouble with the law. Um And number two is his wife. Emma didn’t like the fact that he um was marrying wives, but she certainly was putting her foot down when it came to having other Children. So she was gonna keep that from happening three is if the wives were able to practice primitive birth control processes. Um You’ve talked about that before in your last podcast, we’re not gonna go over a whole lot. That’s one of the things that they, uh, they point out related to that is that Joseph employed the abortion tactics he learned from John C Bennett. Um Again, this is kind of, I thought, I call this the far end of the speculative narrative here. Number five, you hear this one quite a bit just getting pregnant is hard.
[1:17:13] Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. Ok.
[1:17:14] Peter Brown: In general, it’s, it’s hard. It’s not the easiest thing to do under stressful circumstances. Um That fertility can just be, be, be challenging and I can tell you from our standpoint, it can be if you have infertility problems. Um But we’re gonna go through this because this is, this is the stuff I’ve done a lot of research into because of my background and my um my experiences. So we can talk about that. Number six is Joseph didn’t have any time. He was too busy trying to be the mayor and trying to be the general and trying to run a university and trying to run from the law and trying to um run a church that he didn’t have the time to, to go around having um these types of relationships which again comes more from the, the apologist Mormon side of things. Um um The anti Mormon side is that’s all he was doing.
[1:18:10] Michelle: You know, that was his whole motive.
[1:18:12] Peter Brown: He was catting around everywhere. Um Number seven is that Joseph had magic powers to only have Children in the fall or spring. We’ll kind of touch on that. That was kind of fun. And then, and then the last one we’ll talk about is it’s hard to get pregnant as a polygamist claim is a claim they have lower fertility. So we’ll go through these. Ok. So the first is legal issues waiting to go west. Um So the State of Illinois had an anti bigamy law on the books, that was $2000 fine. And I think 18 months in prison was the, um, if you got convicted of it, that was what you were looking at as far as um, punishment from the law. And again, during the Temple Lot ceremony, this is what Joseph F Smith said. Is that why didn’t Joseph Smith have kids? Well, it was illegal and, well, the, the, the, the bigamy and polygamy was illegal and a child was essentially evidence that there was a relationship going on. And so he just couldn’t have Children because that would have really compromised him legally. And he would have faced the, the, the challenges of an Illinois um Antiga anti bigamy soup. But let’s also talk about what Joseph Smith was going through in terms of other legal issues and put that into comparison with an anti bigamy charge. He was wanted for murder or attempted murder in, in Missouri was facing the
[1:19:43] Michelle: governor, the governor, that’s a big deal
[1:19:47] Peter Brown: was facing extradition charges and was uh there was attempts to kidnap him. One almost happened um where he actually did get kidnapped and then rescued. I just wanted to make a movie on that. That one was, that’s pretty fascinating. But so he’s dealing with that. He’s dealing with charges of um counterfeit, he’s dealing with issues related to bankruptcy. Um until 1841 there were no bankruptcy laws on the books. And so people from Kirtland, people from New York were trying to place claim on Joseph’s as a, as somebody who was in debt to them. And if you couldn’t pay his debts back in those days, you went to debtor’s prison, you were chased down by the law and put in prison for, for owing somebody money. So he’s dealing with that. Um, that changed a little bit later on when, with the, with the, with the, um, with the laws that were passed in 1841 related to bankruptcy,
[1:20:46] Michelle: I’m actually going to do an episode going into that when I’m talking, when I respond to the deeds and the lots because that plays into it a lot. So, yeah, people will get more bankruptcy
[1:20:56] Peter Brown: issues and trying to maximize um um the new law that had been passed, but also avoid getting caught from the old law. And then when it was rescinded in 43 then he was back to dealing with the same problems related to bankruptcy. So
[1:21:15] Michelle: it was complicated. Yeah, he had a lot of stress
[1:21:17] Peter Brown: right. There was also charges of treason. There was the whole council of 50 concern that he was trying to set up a theocracy.
[1:21:25] Michelle: Can I just point out also, uh this is what I find interesting just really quickly all of these charges. If you really do the research stem from John Bennett. John Bennett is the one pushing to have him accused and charged and wanted for each of these things that we’ve gone through so far. And I find it fascinating that John Bennett was the real bigamist. Right. He was the one that had a wife and child that nobody knew, wife and Children that nobody knew about and was pursuing bigamy. He was never like he wasn’t afraid to pursue bigamy despite the law and he’s the one making sure these charges are coming. I just find that really interesting. If it weren’t for John Bennett, Joseph wouldn’t have had nearly so many legal problems because John Bennett was the one making all of these accusations very aggressively. Ok. Correct.
[1:22:09] Peter Brown: And the other thing that was going on in NAVOO is, is that when Joseph was booked or brought before a court or a judge, he was a liberal user of the habeas corpus um term in the term of the law, which basically, it’s kind of like we’re not gonna book you, we’re not gonna put you in prison, we’re gonna let you go. Um We’ll wait till there’s a trial before we decide whether or not we’re gonna um um imprison you or, or fi fine you or charge you. And then a lot of times by that time the charges were dropped, um, a lot of anti Hormons complain that he, you know, overuses essentially to get away with things. Um, whether whether or not he did the point is he was a liberal user of it and could have used it. He could have used this with anti bigamy charges just like anything else. Um whether it was true or not true, you could have used it. But the bottom line isn’t, I think it wasn’t until 1844. June or May or June of 1844. In relation to the expositor incident, there were no lawsuits brought up against Joseph for, for practicing bigamy.
[1:23:14] Michelle: Yeah, that he, he was never wanted for that. In any way, the bigamy laws had all of these legal problems. Nothing to do with polygamy. Ok. All the legal
[1:23:24] Peter Brown: issues related to polygamy had to do with slander. Either somebody complained that Joseph slandered them for calling them a liar for saying he was a polygamist or the other way around. Joseph would sue for slandering him for calling him a polygamist. So those are the lawsuits for dealing with the, the, the, the phrasing of Francis Sig or John T Igby lawsuit in 42. Um and the uh um the lawsuit that uh what’s the guy’s name that accused Hyrum Smith of, of polygamy? And for
[1:23:56] Michelle: that guy Spencer? Yeah, I can’t remember. But yeah, the last time you
[1:24:01] Peter Brown: get up in 1844 in April and give that speech was that
[1:24:03] Michelle: lawsuit, right? And the voice of innocence also, also, all of the other NVI polygamists also had to deal with the, the bigamy law and the, and they had extra wives and they had Children. So this was not, this was something that Joseph F Smith later on had to dig up to apply to go. Oh, this could have been the reason there was no writing about them being worried about this law. There’s, there’s zero evidence of this law having anything to do with any of Joseph’s or any of the other not or any of the polygamist decisions. Ok.
[1:24:36] Peter Brown: My opinion is it was that Joseph, I was just speculating, that was his best answer. I don’t think he really knew. Um, the kind of related idea is that he’s going to wait to go west to, to do that. That’s what he’s gonna do. He’s not gonna have kids. He’s in rare women. And then when he goes west, then he’ll start practicing openly or stop having abortions, whatever it is that he was gonna stop, he would stop doing that when he left when he crossed the Mississippi. Ok. Um, we’ll find out later why? That’s a challenge. OK. Reason two is Emma Smith. Um, uh, that Emma somehow forbade him from having Children because Joseph didn’t want to risk her ire of siring Children. He, he, but he was, it was ok risking her ire to marry other women and some behind her back. And, um, that was ok because an angel commanded him to do that but not to raise up seed. So that, to me sense at all that she had some sort of like sway over him in that realm, but not in the marriage realm. Some, somehow the angel was like all Right. All right. I get it. You can really little but don’t have any Children. But,
[1:25:51] Michelle: and, and let’s remember in this entire discussion, there really is no birth control. So what you’re saying is you can’t marry. Right. And, and the other thing is all of the, all of the sources that we have for the claims of Emma in any way being, overseeing his polygamy or, I mean, objecting to his polygamy and being so angry and controlling and having him followed. Those are the same sources that tell us the story about her approaching the pregnant alive. Is it down the stairs? Which we know is false? And we so so all of these stories have again zero evidence to back them up at all except this later testimonial evidence, which so much of it, we have already proven to be completely false that there’s no reason to believe this part of it when we know so much of it was false.
[1:26:35] Peter Brown: She what she really experienced in Nauvoo versus William Clayton and Eliza Partridge who by the time Eliza Partridge says this, she’s Eliza Gimble or Eliza Young. I can’t remember which one she married. Um that all blurs after a while. Anyway, you’ve got a Miss Kimball and a Mrs Brigham Young and a William Clayton going Emma was, was pissed and you’re
[1:26:57] Michelle: like, they’re telling us this story. Yeah, we ignored Joseph the third. We ignored Emma herself and we believe these other people Yeah. Ok. Who already, who we know lied and lied and lied? Ok.
[1:27:07] Peter Brown: So one of the other pieces that somebody had pointed out on a forum was that Emma was in charge of their schedules and their ovulation records and she was basically new when they were having their period and would make sure that Joseph could go around and cat around in, in ways that would make sure that he didn’t have any Children.
[1:27:25] Michelle: I hope whoever said that will watch last week’s episode. I wondered who would be running this, this um ring of f this fertility ring until yeah, they would have had to do that after 1819 30. So, ok, that’s helpful. Let’s continue. The dumb claims are just there
[1:27:44] Peter Brown: which you addressed last week. Um So we’re not going to necessarily get into it. It was virtually non existent or very dangerous in 1840 we just don’t have any evidence of that happening a lot more. Um dead women um or to apply poisons or dangerous implements to, to uh stop pregnancy from happening
[1:28:08] Michelle: in 18. And I also want to say that while there were those dangerous me methods, they were not had among like puritan women, they were not had among the women who would have joined the church. They were had in brothels, they were had in right houses of ill repute. So, so no, we don’t have any evidence for any of this. Ok.
[1:28:27] Peter Brown: So there’s the birth control, um, reason for somewhat related was abortion. Um Again, you talked about this last time that uh um you know, Sarah Pratt said that Bennett carried around and, and implement he where he could take care of Joseph’s issues. So the only part I wanted to add to this is let’s let’s go through the timeline a little bit of, of John C Bennet. Um because I’ve done some research into this, John C. Bennett was already out of favor with Joseph Smith as early as February of 1841. This is when he sent George Miller to investigate claims that Bennett had left a wife and family in another state when he came to Illinois. And it’s great that he, you know, helped get the charter going and it’s great that he um um set up the university and he did all these wonderful things for the Saints, which kind of ingratiated himself to Joseph Smith and put him in such a high standing. But by, by early 1841 he’s already suspicious. So you have to have this image of Joseph and Bennett sort of walking around from 41 to 43 as two peas in a pod because most of Joseph’s wives took place. What year?
[1:29:46] Michelle: 42 43 43 and Bennett was already kicked out 40
[1:29:51] Peter Brown: 2, 43. He’s already got his, he’s not around anywhere to be doing any of this stuff. They go. Well, he taught Wilder Richards his, his practices. And, um, and while, um, and, and, ok, that’s just, again, that’s conjecture. But again, um, you have to ask yourself this question, why do we get 48 Children born from 44 to 46 in NAU, but not before June of 44. So it was Willard Richards testing Joseph and others and these terrible abortions. And then all of a sudden they decided not to in 44. And so it, it just begs a lot of questions that, that, that will then take you up to that whole problem of what changed in the middle of 1844.
[1:30:40] Michelle: Exactly. Yep. And this is also pe people who haven’t watched last week, go watch last week also because there was no ability to do abortions by these men. Them being doctors did not mean they had any gynecological obstetrical practice of any kind or abortionist practice of any kind. So, OK.
[1:31:01] Peter Brown: And, and, and, and finally just that, I mean, with all of the claims that get thrown about that people like you and me are conspiracy theorists. This is a conspiracy theory,
[1:31:12] Michelle: a massive one that they were secret. Like you have to think of the numbers of people who would know about these sick women, right? These damaged and dying women and no one could tell. Yeah. OK.
[1:31:28] Peter Brown: It’s all based on conjecture. OK. Um And then again, what birth control or abortion, again, we’re going back to the numbers of pre 1844 Nauvoo Children born at polygamists as well as those that were born after. We’ve got evidence of Children. We’ve got evidence before and after of Children. Um a few more before and then a ton after I, why wasn’t it happening? Why wasn’t it happening to these men? Why only just if they claim to be his successors and his followers, why did he do it one way? But they did it a whole different way.
[1:32:05] Michelle: Right. Yeah, John Bennett should have been a really busy guy way busier than he was. And Clayton. Yeah, I mean, Richards. Ok.
[1:32:13] Peter Brown: And he would have had to sneak back into town because no one liked him and he was kicked out and excommunicated to do this stuff and then sneak back out of town. All right. So again, it, it brings us to this fulcrum point of why were kids allowed post 1844? I mean, for me, this is the obvious answer. The obvious answer is that Joseph had and hire were dead. And so the threats of excommunication and exposure to polygamy went down quite a bit. And so it was ok for people to start living more openly what they believed and start siring Children.
[1:32:51] Michelle: Ok. I couldn’t agree more. We have on the, we have people being excommunicated for polygamy by Joseph and Hyrum. Right. I don’t know that like after they were dead, people weren’t excommunicated for polygamy. It was Joseph and Hyrum that were the limiting factor. They were, it wasn’t the, it wasn’t the Illinois government that people were afraid of or were hiding from. It was Joseph and Hyrum and Emma. Yeah. Ok. I agree completely. I mean, it’s the only thing that makes
[1:33:21] Peter Brown: sense. I’m open to other, like, really good answers and I’ve actually put this out there to the wider community but I haven’t gotten good responses. Um That’s the best response I’ve ever. Well, I shouldn’t say it’s the best response. The only response I was given was it was Emma Smith
[1:33:40] Michelle: the OK. That, that claim that she was overseeing the population or that she was keeping them on a leash. Yeah,
[1:33:49] Peter Brown: that Joseph, that Joseph was, was kept on a leash because of Emma. But all the other polygamists had willing and um wives that were the wives that embraced their privilege. So that’s, that’s where the Children but Emma, but Joseph didn’t because she didn’t embrace her privilege
[1:34:09] Michelle: again. So funny that we claim that she could control him and yet we claim that he had 33 wives, right? And I love that you have Hiram’s picture there as well because no, there’s no controversy about Hyrum having no other Children. And if he were Joseph’s number two guy in this polygamist church, he would also have many w I mean many wives and many Children. So he’s great.
[1:34:32] Peter Brown: Hiram should have, have 29
[1:34:35] Michelle: right? It should be like Brigham and Heber. Yeah. So yeah, I’m glad you have that. Like please anyone send in your answers. Like let us know why, what this could be, what, what the cause of this is. Ok.
[1:34:49] Peter Brown: So the reason five, it’s, it’s really hard to get pregnant. I’ve heard this one too, um particularly if you’re a busy person. Right. So, so this is something again going back to my situation because my wife and I have struggled with infertility. We have learned a lot about what it takes to get pregnant. We’ve learned a lot about the um the cycles, we learned a lot about the chances of getting pregnant. What are the ideal days to get pregnant? Um And, and so we have a lot of sort of anecdotal knowledge because of our personal circumstance that we’ve been involved in. Um and, you know, eventually we ended up being able to have a family because of in vitro fertilization. But trying all of these sort of rhythm methods and, and, and calendar methods that was sort of our early on attempt to try to get a family and, and uh so we had to learn all this stuff, right? And so, so if you try, if you are optimal and doing everything that you should do, which, you know, it, it, it doesn’t the, the conversely you don’t, you, I think that you’re supposed to have sex a lot during the ovulation window. Actually, you’re supposed to kind of skip a few days on the man’s part so he can recharge and, um, and then there’s certain days before and certain days after, if you do that just right, you have a 30% chance of getting pregnant.
[1:36:20] Michelle: People
[1:36:20] Peter Brown: know that that’s people think. Well, that’s pretty low. Right. Um, but if you think about it, if you have a 30% chance of getting pregnant in month one,
[1:36:30] Michelle: right. What’s your chance of getting 60%? Right.
[1:36:33] Peter Brown: Well, it’s not 60% because, and I’ll talk about this in a minute. This has to do with probability math, which I’ll get into a little bit but it, it goes up. Right. It goes up and the more you do it, the more, um, so within a year’s time frame, you have a really good chance of getting pregnant. If you are both fertile and you make attempts in the right time of the, the month, you have a pretty good chance of getting pregnant,
[1:37:02] Michelle: we’ll just, we’ll just say even, even without the intentional trying, most couples like, and, and like a couple not using birth control is most likely to get pregnant within the first year. And if you haven’t gotten pregnant in the first year, even just simply not using birth control or just having a regular sex life, you can be diagnosed with infertility. It’s a year that they expect you to get pregnant within. So, ok, even not doing everything perfectly. Ok,
[1:37:29] Peter Brown: let’s, so, let’s also imagine. And I guess we have to imagine we know that they didn’t really understand this back in 1840
[1:37:37] Michelle: they didn’t understand it at all.
[1:37:38] Peter Brown: And so it’s just gonna be a crapshoot. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s out of 30 30 31 days of the month. And the only thing that I could, I could, II, I took out of the equation was, well, there’s probably a pretty good chance that they wouldn’t be doing it during the times of a period because that’s what’s seen as morally repugnant and, and, and theologically repugnant, that wouldn’t happen. Um, but if, if you’re come, if you come from the supra angle of this, you’re like, I don’t care, I’m just, I’m, I’m a cat and I wanna go do what I wanna do. The probability of getting pregnant just randomly throughout any, um, day of the month is 3%. Again, that’s pretty low. Just random, right? And if you were to take out the, um, the days that a woman’s on her period, it goes up a little bit at 3.3%. So if anybody has that issue or question, there’s really not a whole lot of difference. It, and we’re just talking about one time with one person once during a random time of the month, you have a 3% chance of getting pregnant.
[1:38:47] Michelle: Ok. So, can I add 11, can I just add one little element to this um tech often, also women’s sex drives tend to be higher during fertile periods. And so sex is more likely to occur in a married couple when her sex drive is higher because she’s fertile. That’s just part of the biological rhythm of things. So, anyway, so continue. But I just wanted to add that piece in my
[1:39:11] Peter Brown: chart here. There’s a fertility. Um There’s a bit of a difference between ages. Um uh Women are more fertile when they’re younger, they’re less fertile when they’re older. I could, I didn’t want to get into all of that, but someone’s gonna bring that question up. Well, yeah, but if I had the women that he could have had Children with how many of them were in their prime. A
[1:39:31] Michelle: lot, a lot more.
[1:39:34] Peter Brown: But it doesn’t make that much of a difference. It makes, it makes a difference in like 1 to 1.5%. That’s all
[1:39:43] Michelle: the
[1:39:44] Peter Brown: change in the, in the. So basically it’s, you, you have a 3% chance of getting pregnant, maybe take off 0.1 0.2% on that. And that’s the difference. That’s a differential. That doesn’t, it doesn’t change. OK. Um So, oops, so I went ahead and made a chart of a number of possible sexual encounters and I only included 18 wives. OK. So Brian Hill says there’s 10, I counted 18 that I consider to be viable. That’s my number. But really, I could, I just ran out of space. I just chopped it off. So down the, down the left hand side, you have the number of wives and across the um the upper side are the number of encounters with those wives. And so
[1:40:36] Michelle: I just want to clarify what Brian Hill says. 10, he says 10 that we have so strong evidence of sexuality. Todd Compton assumes that a wife means sex. So really this number could be much higher. You could have gone up to 33 wives, which is the smaller estimate of how many wives jos have had. You could have gone up to 50. So you’re being quite conservative here by only including 18 wives. I just want to point that out. Ok. And by
[1:41:00] Peter Brown: the way, that number 432 that I’ve got circled, if Joseph’s polygamy calendar is two years, which is about two years from the middle of 42 to the middle of 44
[1:41:12] Michelle: the super high, high intensity polygamy
[1:41:16] Peter Brown: relations every other day. He would have had 232 encounters. So that’s kind of the maximum I think of. That’s, that’s possible. Yeah, I guess you could say he had it every day, but
[1:41:32] Michelle: that’s also only within, only within those two years. Right. And I know that a lot of, um, I guess we can call them polygamous men. Men who have a lot of sexual opportunity might have sex more than once a day. Right. It’s not. So, so if, if you were really running this polygamous cult, so I don’t want to even necessarily say that’s the maximum because you only have two years, you only have 18 wives and you’re only saying every other day. So it is AAA high end estimate based on the, every other day. But there are other reasons that would make it rather low end. So this is
[1:42:05] Peter Brown: a, this is what I call it, call a conservative maximum estimate.
[1:42:09] Michelle: OK. OK.
[1:42:10] Peter Brown: So let’s talk a little bit about probability because I, I have some training in it. You know, I went, I went to, I went to get economics degree and ST statistics in my, in my master’s program and know how to model it just a little bit. So it’s helpful for people to think about this in terms of like a 12 sided dice or a 12 sided die or die dice. Dice is one dice two. You take that 12 sided dye and you roll it and you go, what is the chance of you rolling a one? It’s one in 12 chances, which is about 3%. Now roll it again. Now roll it again. What’s the chance of getting one, same, same probability? However, what’s the chance of you rolling a one? Either once or twice? You don’t add it together, you don’t multiply it together. It’s a complicated mathematical analysis, but essentially it’s, it’s higher. Let’s just put it that way. Now, if you roll a, a, if you roll a dye, um, 100 times, what are the chances of it, of you getting a one at least once of those times?
[1:43:20] Michelle: Oh,
[1:43:22] Peter Brown: you’re going to get one at least once. So that’s what we’re trying to figure out here is what’s the probability of having at least one child in all of these circumstances? So, do you understand where we’re coming from here?
[1:43:38] Michelle: Ok. So you’re saying, even if we rolled a dye 432 times, we’re gonna get a one at least once,
[1:43:47] Peter Brown: at least once. So I plucked this into a probability matrix and the colors on here really help. So you notice at that very, very far end of 432 you’re deep into 100% chance, but that doesn’t really tell the full picture. It’s probably more like 1000% chance. If that makes sense, you’re gonna roll one more than once. Probably we’ll, we’ll, we’ll show that a little bit later, probably closer to between seven and 20 times what we have here. And then you have a little bit of AAA lighter shade of green and, and that’s the 90th percentile. And then you have another light brand that’s the 80th percentile and then the 70 the 60 then the white is anything under 50%. And so just as an example, if Joseph was only married to one wife and has 20 encounters with that one wife.
[1:44:43] Michelle: Over those two
[1:44:44] Peter Brown: years. Yeah, over those two years by the 21st encounter. Um, and it could, it could be over any period of time. We’re just talking about encounters right by the 21st time is now at a 50% chance of getting pregnant.
[1:44:58] Michelle: Ok. Ok. Ok.
[1:45:00] Peter Brown: So, so, um, I usually talking about in terms of a month because cycles go in a month and that’s, that’s a really, that’s a really good estimate, as you’ll see in a minute why I kind of picked a monthly sort of assumption is it because of the way the cycles work? So, so, so we’re now 50% at two wives. Um, uh, two wives and 10 encounters, you have to multiply those encounters. So it’s not like it’s like 10 encounters with one wife and 10 encounters with, with this second wife. Um, it, uh, then that’s, then you start to hit the green once you do that and then the more wives you go up, the faster you hit the green. So that by the time you’re, by the time you’re at 11 wives, if you just have two encounters with each one of those 11 wives, you’re now at a 50% chance of getting pregnant. Does that make sense? Mhm. Do you have any questions about that? I mean, this is, it’s just really kind of an interesting way to sort of like,
[1:46:03] Michelle: it’s really, I do wanna again, point out that you stopped the graph at 18. And according to some people, it could go all the way to 50 at least to 33. So, so, and, and by the time you get down into those numbers, that dark green section would be huge. And I just want to say like 90% does anyone want to take a bet that’s against 90%? Right. That’s a very, very high probability. OK. Even, even if we’re not in 100% range. So, OK,
[1:46:34] Peter Brown: so now we want to plug in what our experts say about Joseph’s conjugal. So we’ll go to our three experts here. Um Brian Hills, Todd Compton and Von Brodie. And uh we’re gonna still man it just a little bit to try to help them out. But then we’ll see what happens. One of the things that I’ve got to point out is I’m putting an assumption in here that you have one sexual encounter a month for a year, just one year
[1:47:08] Michelle: and just one encounter a month,
[1:47:11] Peter Brown: each one of these wives. OK. That’s not a lot. And I put into my graph and I go, OK, Brian Hills, you say that there’s 10 wives that um we have good, there’s evidence. And if you just have one relationship with one of those wives for a whole year, once a month, you have a 98.3% chance.
[1:47:37] Michelle: Wow. OK. That’s
[1:47:40] Peter Brown: just one year.
[1:47:42] Michelle: Just one
[1:47:45] Peter Brown: percent if, if you go down to once every other month or bi monthly it’s 86.9%
[1:47:53] Michelle: in one year. Ok. Yeah, it’s still gonna happen, it’s still gonna happen with one of these women. Yeah.
[1:48:02] Peter Brown: Yeah, if you go for two years, um, it’s 100% and that’s what, just 10 wives, right? So now if you throw Von Brodie and Compton in there, the, the chances are you’re 100% you basically lock yourself down and, and, and here’s the, here’s the, the crazy, um, conclusion we come to is the more wives that we give Joseph Smith, the worse the case gets that he, um, as to why he doesn’t have any Children,
[1:48:37] Michelle: right?
[1:48:38] Peter Brown: If you’d only had four, you could make, you could make the claim with four wives because you could look at that chart and go, well, four wives and maybe he wasn’t very busy. Um, maybe that’s why we don’t have very many Children. And the interesting thing is if you take that graph and you apply it to some of these other men that have five wives, four wives, three wives, the numbers kind of pan out a little bit. Ok. Um,
[1:49:02] Michelle: so
[1:49:03] Peter Brown: we’ve got one or two kids out of this. Well, that makes sense. Mhm. Um, so anyway, that, that’s where we’re at and into Brian Hall’s credit and into the, the, the apologists credit. I feel like that they have the, you, you said this but I’ll reiterate, they have the weakest case when it comes to trying to justify Mormon polygamy and the morality of Joseph Smith. They do all kinds of cartwheels to try to make that work. And it’s really disingenuous and difficult to swallow, even when I was um on my mission. And even when I was um
[1:49:40] Michelle: believing the standard narrative,
[1:49:41] Peter Brown: believing in the standard narrative, um it just couldn’t swallow it really easily. I just had to put it on the shelf,
[1:49:50] Michelle: right. But I think you go
[1:49:53] Peter Brown: ahead in this instance, he has the stronger argument because at least with his argument, we’re into some plausible, you know, probabilities that actually could work in a slim chance.
[1:50:07] Michelle: He’s, he’s at least on the right. He’s at least on the side of minimizing the sex saying there really wasn’t very much sex at all the other side to
[1:50:17] Peter Brown: have a better chance of overcoming the no Children argument,
[1:50:20] Michelle: right? Not a good one. It’s not good, but it’s better, but it’s not as bad as the side that has always made it about
[1:50:28] Peter Brown: that. The Fon brody uh to Compton, Lindsay Park sort of take.
[1:50:35] Michelle: OK. OK.
[1:50:37] Peter Brown: Um But let’s take this a step further because one of the reasons they talk about is that Joseph didn’t have access to or he was busy or couldn’t get around. Um And that’s why if there was, you could say that it’s really difficult for him to find time to, to put it in his calendar to meet up with these women. I’ve heard that too until you look at the reality situation is that he’s got seven women living under his roof at certain points of time in his life that he would have had easy access to any given night in the morning
[1:51:16] Michelle: or day or anywhere. Yeah.
[1:51:19] Peter Brown: And so that, that argument just doesn’t wash because you’ve got, um, Fannie Auger is the first one we claim as a wife. Um, and I’m assuming it to your residency. I actually couldn’t find how long she actually lived with them. It was at least two years. It was my option. Um, and the, the, the, the marriage date, I just made an assumption that she was married for one year. Um, if you are in the apologist camp, you’re gonna say that sex didn’t happen until the marriage date. If you’re, if you’re in the non, if you’re in the ex Mormon camp, you’re gonna say the sex happened immediately. The marriage was only a cover a cover story.
[1:51:56] Michelle: Right. Well, and I guess that’s a good point. Like the story in the barn. If you’re going to believe that they were like having sex in the barn, which I think is a terrible, there’s not good evidence for that at all. But if you’re going to believe that, why would you assume that was the first time they were having sex? It would have just been the one time Emma caught them. So it would be the last time, not the first time. So, yes, they could have been having sex many, many, many other times before they got caught as often happens in affairs. So, ok.
[1:52:24] Peter Brown: Um, and so I just went through it and, and pointed out that Emily Partridge had an 11 month residency from my estimates and was four months married to Joe Smith before she was, you know, kicked out of the, the, the homestead and she would have
[1:52:42] Michelle: gotten pregnant. She was very
[1:52:46] Peter Brown: of married time and 11 months residency. Not Lucy Walker. Um, I don’t know the residency but she was three months married to him, but I know she was living under the roof as a nanny, um, while she was there and then we got the, the mysterious Sarah and Maria Lawrence who lived with them for four years basically where, um, taken to the Smith household essentially as foster daughters. And then, and then married in the middle, middle of 1843 is sort of, uh, you know, Emma doesn’t like the par of sisters, but she’s ok with the Lawrence sisters. Uh, you know, Maria died, I think before coming west, we don’t have any good statements from her. We have other people that say, yeah, Sarah was a wife of Joseph Smith. But then, but uh, sorry, Maria was the wife of Joe Smith, but Sarah Lawrence gets out to Utah, by the way, I just found this out. Isn’t this fascinating? The things that you find out just by going to, um, do some research on his wives is that Sarah claimed she was never with Joseph Smith. She was never married to Joseph Smith. She’s the, she’s one wife out there that says bull honky to it all. Nobody ever talked to that one.
[1:54:00] Michelle: She’s still considered a wife, even though she herself said absolutely not. And her dead sister is also a wife. Oh, my word that
[1:54:11] Peter Brown: came from Brian Hill’s website. So,
[1:54:13] Michelle: oh, my word kind
[1:54:15] Peter Brown: of buries the lead. But I mean, that’s a huge, that’s a huge, like, um, you know,
[1:54:22] Michelle: the women
[1:54:24] Peter Brown: had two wives that basically lied about him having wives. Emma Smith and Sarah Lawrence.
[1:54:30] Michelle: Oh, my word. Ok. All right. She
[1:54:34] Peter Brown: was the last one to tell. And she got married to him when they were in the mansion, the nuh house in September October and essentially stays until he’s martyred again. She’s there for 10 months. And she’s one of the
[1:54:48] Michelle: ones, all of these women
[1:54:49] Peter Brown: and, and Melissa and Eliza have went on record at the Temple lot case and said they were basically husband.
[1:54:57] Michelle: Mhm. And these women were all young, prime fertility years and I, I can’t speak authoritatively because I don’t know off the top of my head about all of them. But my understanding is at least the vast majority, if not all of them went on to have Children without any problem. They weren’t, no, nobody in this story was facing fertility issues. OK?
[1:55:23] Peter Brown: Um I mean, I haven’t looked at all of them but the vast majority of OK,
[1:55:30] Michelle: I can do that research in it and correct it if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. Ok.
[1:55:34] Peter Brown: So, so if we in a more realistic encounter scenario with these women, seven women, um if Joseph just went down the hall once a week, we 100% chance, right? If he went down the hall, um
[1:55:55] Michelle: twice a month,
[1:55:56] Peter Brown: we’re 100% chance. If you only went down the hall once a month, we’re still at a 96.1% chance of having at least one child. And
[1:56:06] Michelle: why would he go down the hall only once a month if this were the reality of the situation? Oh my goodness. OK.
[1:56:13] Peter Brown: So, um the question we have to ask ourselves is if we believe what these women say, the Children argument sort of undercuts their testimony. But if we don’t believe what they say and we believe they exaggerate it. Well, what else do they exaggerate about? So you’re kind of putting a conundrum here?
[1:56:34] Michelle: Ok. So you’re saying, believe whether we believe them about the sexual encounters, they, they’re, they’re in a lose, lose situation, the accusers of Joseph have a lose, lose situation. OK. Excellent.
[1:56:46] Peter Brown: Correct. And that’s what that’s what’s challenging about this whole argument. Um So, and then finally, I applied these, these child ratios from other polygamists with nuvo Children. Uh and I, and I just pulled five out. I, I could have done more but I went ahead and pulled five out and we have an average fertility rate of 86%. In other words, for almost one polygamous wife, you have an Aus, you know, it’s like almost the
[1:57:18] Michelle: OK. Yeah. OK. For every wife you have 0.86 of a child. So OK. All right. So if you,
[1:57:26] Peter Brown: if you, if you’ve been put Joseph Smith back into the mix, we should find between nine and 26 Children of Joseph Smith somewhere in Nabu.
[1:57:38] Michelle: Wow. Wow. Based on that same fertility rate that stands up with all of the others and we don’t. That’s amazing. And
[1:57:49] Peter Brown: that’s, that’s just, that’s just hard fact is that we is that we don’t. And so again, one of these, one of these ducks acts differently than the other duct. And so can we really say that they’re all doing the same thing? And the answer is eight. All right. So we got through that. We have, we have two more answers to go through. Um This, this last, this, this last second and last one is kind of silly, but I looked into it a little bit. Um Michael Quinn comes up with this argument that Joseph Smith was super interested in the Astrological um side of things. He had the Jupiter Talisman. He was big into scrying and, and he and Hiram were big into, you know, gold digging and, and Sear stoning and, and using magic techniques. Uh He’s really, he wrote the book, The Ma Mormonism and the Magic World View. And because Joseph’s Children were largely born in the spring or the fall, he proposes that Joseph either believed or conjured or did some sort of like ceremony or had some sort of for fertility God capability of only siring Children when he wanted to sire Children,
[1:59:04] Michelle: right? And it’s,
[1:59:07] Peter Brown: you know, a very science, you know, sort of explanation as to why Joseph Smith didn’t have Children but was still a polygamist. This popped up as one of the reasons um that was given. And I thought that was very interesting that this would become an argument that someone would take even remotely seriously given the fact that they believe that Joseph Smith was a con man and didn’t have any magical power at all to translate records, but he has the ability to wave a magic wand and decide when he’s gonna conceive Children. And then the last one is I’ve heard from, especially polygamists themselves say that look, polygamy, fertility was low. And um and so I started looking into this and they base that primarily off of um the fact that in Utah fertility was generally lower, but this is just comparing numbers. It’s just looking at numbers of Children born to numbers of wives of polygamous households versus numbers of Children born to numbers of wives and monogamous households. And so that is true. While it’s true, there’s a scientific study. It’s just a raw comparison.
[2:00:19] Michelle: Right. I think it’s also useful to just consider how this argument shoots them in the foot as well because the claim is that God needs polygamy so more babies can be born. And yet polygamous women in Utah had fewer babies and maybe you’re going to get to this. But I think it had much more to do with the circumstances. You had men of multiple wives sent on missions for years at a time or traveling long distances in frontier Utah to get to each of the wives. The women had far fewer Children because they had far fewer opportunities to have Children because they effectively didn’t have a husband for most of the time. So, so it’s circumstantial, not in any way scientific or. Ok.
[2:00:58] Peter Brown: So some of the arguments they make because there’s a sexual selection bias, which essentially means that what a man get to choose his mate when a woman doesn’t really get to choose hers. So subconsciously, she’s going to be less fertile because she didn’t optimize her selectivity. Very darwinistic way to look at marriage,
[2:01:15] Michelle: but also shoots polygamy in the foot because it’s saying women are miserable in polygamy, which is true. But that’s a pretty funny way to talk about it. Ok.
[2:01:24] Peter Brown: So, so then there’s male fertility and and they’ll say, well, there’s lower fertility because men are having so much sex essentially depleted. Um Their
[2:01:33] Michelle: sperm counts are lower because they don’t have as much time to recharge is what they’re
[2:01:36] Peter Brown: saying. Correct. And then the, and then the other one was that the, the cohabit women and women under the same households would have aligning menstrual cycles. And therefore, they’re all pretty much only fertile at a certain time of the month and not for certain at other times of the month. So that’s gonna change fertility rate. So those are all the reasons that were given. But thankfully, we have some science to back us up. Um They actually because places in West Africa still practice polygamy today, they did a huge um fertility study down there where they, they, they baked in all these other factors, right? And um they baked in all these factors and at the end of the day, um uh there’s no difference. So we’ve really addressed all these reasons that people give us to why Jose Smith didn’t have polygamy. Um
[2:02:30] Michelle: Yeah, I do want to point out really quickly just on this last slide because you mentioned women’s periods aligning. And I pointed out in the last episode that actually doesn’t happen enough. It’s been proven to be false anyway. So, and, and that that women’s periods that women’s cycles align when they live together, that’s, that’s been proven false. Also, Joseph’s wives never didn’t live together, right. His wives in his right. And, and that would be irrelevant because that doesn’t even happen. So. Ok.
[2:02:58] Peter Brown: Right. So, so, but the point is at the end of the day, the scientific study took all those things in the factored them out. And at the end of the day they said, look, we should polygamy and monogamy fertility. So, this is a non-issue. OK. All right. So, the final answer is that Joseph wasn’t a pom. And for me, it’s the most rational expectation based on the physical evidence and the numbers. And it’s true that there’s a lot of testimonial evidence that seems to say the other, other, other way is, is more likely. But if you’re trying to compare physical evidence to testimonial evidence, physical evidence is almost always stronger because it’s kind of like if you’re trying to, there’s the old adage that if you’re trying to find, you’re trying to, um you got a murder case in order to convict a murderer, you have to have a body. Um and, and a murder weapon is noted and in this case, we don’t have bodies, we don’t have murder weapons. They may have a motive, but that’s it, it’s very light to go on. And so, you know, in order to,
[2:04:14] Michelle: well, we could, the physical evidence, the physical evidence would be the bodies of the Children, we should have the bodies, right? The smoking gun would be things in the journals, in the letters and that like there is physical evidence we could have. And interestingly, we do have that on the other side, we have the history. We have the massively strong motive on the other side. And we have all of the physical evidence of the literally changed, documents, changed, records, changed journal entries. And we have the earlier letter and journal entries of the polygamists that were practicing it before Joseph taught it to them. And then we have all of the Children of the polygamists. So I would say that we have a massive amount of physical evidence to, like you said, to contrast these two, well, the polygamists from Joseph Smith and then all we have is that testimonial evidence, which all of it was massively motivated and there’s no physical but it’s to back it up. So it falls very, very flat. So if we’re going to look at Ockham’s razor, you know, like the idea that the answer is the one that requires the least amount of speculation and the least amount of coming up with various scenarios. The obvious answer that fits Ockham’s razor that requires the least amount of speculation or wild Jupiter and Saturn type answers is that Joseph was not a polygamist.
[2:05:35] Peter Brown: That’s, I just want to say that’s, that’s for you, Bill real. I’m not trying to be mean, but you’re the one that points out that we have to find the most rational explanation. The Ockham’s razor with the least amount of if you come at it from the physical evidence side, that’s the most rational end, that’s the most rational explanation.
[2:05:56] Michelle: And you don’t have to worry about being mean because he won’t watch this because he doesn’t watch any, any of the information. So,
[2:06:03] Peter Brown: so, so then if, if people take issue with the fact that we’re looking at other ways to construct the testimonial evidence, that seems conspiratorial. This is why because we have to find a way that makes the testimonial evidence, the physical evidence. And, and really, and that’s the end of the presentation, that’s, we can’t plan that back, we can’t gloss over it. We can’t just point out at the end of very long presentations that go through, you know, Melissa La and Lucy Blocker and, and he Helen Mark Kimball and, and you can go through uh millions of pages of affidavits. But if you can’t attack this head on and just discuss it as an aside, you’re not being um honest with the evidence,
[2:06:50] Michelle: right? And you know what’s interesting just like you pointed out that amazing piece that we even either ignore or change the actual testimonial evidence because Sarah who said that she and her sister were not whose sister was dead and she said she wasn’t married to if we ignore that because it doesn’t go along. So all we are basing this case on is the friendly testimonial evidence, the testimonial evidence that supports our case. So Peter this was awesome. I hope people find it, found it compelling. I certainly did. Is there anything else you want to share with us before we wrap it up?
[2:07:25] Peter Brown: Uh, no, this is it. There’s a big massive oak tree that you’ve got to deal with. Um, if you wanna solve this case, if you want to, um, you know, if you want to help us come to terms with your conclusions, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta come at this head on and please, please, please, I hope hopefully, as we’ve gone through this, you’ll understand that it’s really offensive when you call people, conspiracy theorists and polygamy deniers, when we’re just looking at the heart physical evidence here, and we’re coming to these conclusions based upon um numbers and what we see as lack of physical evidence.
[2:08:05] Michelle: Absolutely. That’s so funny. It just shows that they can’t deal with the issues because every single one of us, at least that I’m aware of believed Joseph was a polygamist. That’s what we were taught. That’s what we believed. And it wasn’t until we saw this kind of evidence that the evidence changed our mind. So I invite other people to consider the evidence and the evidence should have an impact on your conclusions if you’re an honest actor. So thank you so much, Peter. I really appreciate it. Good luck with your baby and wish your wife the very best. I’m so glad that you got him here and got him home. I love how clearly and succinctly Peter stated that conclusion. And I think he is exactly right. Again, critical thinking requires you to take the most obvious answer that requires the least amount of conjecture and speculation and the least amount of twisting of and ignoring facts. So I invite anybody who disagrees with this to please respond. Let’s keep the conversation and going. But I think that the case is quite clear, we will still continue to go forward and get into the other claims that the other side uses and relies on to insist that Joseph was a polygamist despite this overwhelming body of hard physical evidence that I think simply cannot be overcome. So thank you for being here for this episode and please stay tuned much, much more to come.
