Introduction to the William Clayton Diaries

Meggan Hayes [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS discussions edition. Today we have a banger, I promise you. So we're going to be talking about the William Clayton journals or diaries for those who have been living on another planet. William Clayton was Joseph Smith's secretary or scribe towards the end of his life and up to the time he was martyred. In my opinion, some of the most important and explosive details about Joseph Smith's last year or so are in there. But because of some current recent news of a copy of the William Clayton Diaries that have not yet been fully and formally released yet by the LDS Church because of recent news that a version of them had been released on the Internet, we're talking about it and we're doing a deep dive. We're doing a deep dive with the Brian Buchanan. Hey, Brian.

Bryan Buchanan [00:01:05] Hey, everybody.

Meggan Hayes [00:01:06] I thought you were just here.

Bryan Buchanan [00:01:07] The seat was still warm when I sat down.

Meggan Hayes [00:01:11] Brian, of course, is one half of the amazing Sunstone history podcast with Lindsay Hansen Park. So we always love. He also is, I don't know if it's fair to say, 1/2 of benchmark Books, but he's definitely an important, super important contributor to Mormonism's favorite bookstore. Can I call it that?

Bryan Buchanan [00:01:32] You should. That's the appropriate.

Meggan Hayes [00:01:35] Buy all your books from Benchmark Books. Visit them regularly. They're in Salt Lake City. But anyway, we're so grateful to have Brian back because there are few Mormon history nerds or Beatles nerds that we love more than Brian Buchanan. So, Brian, welcome back.

Bryan Buchanan [00:01:52] I am the Walrus John Goo Goo Gachoo.

Meggan Hayes [00:01:55] We also have. If that weren't enough, we have Julia. Julia back from analyzing Mormonism. Hey, Julia.

Julia [00:02:04] Hi.

Meggan Hayes [00:02:05] You're our first or second favorite Mormon history nerd.

Julia [00:02:09] Oh, well, great.

Meggan Hayes [00:02:12] Maybe you're tied with Brian, but also we have our second or third favorite Mormon history nerd tied with Kolby Reddish, maybe. Hey, Nemo.

Nemo [00:02:22] Hey.

Kolby Reddish [00:02:22] How we doing?

Meggan Hayes [00:02:24] I got. I should just give up on the ranking. Anyway, this is an LDS Discussions episode. So really quickly, for those who have been living on Mars. We started this series an attempt to do a neutral, objective, fact based analysis of Mormon Church truth claims. We started this series years ago. It's one of the most important things I've done on Mormon stories. We started it with Mike who started a website called LDS Discussions where we did like 60 episodes going in depth on Mormon Church truth claims. At some point, Mike had to retire. We've kept Julia and Nemo, along with Kolby on to do these deep dives. We do them, hopefully a Couple a month and we bring Brian on when he's available and willing. This series is best covered in sequence, so please consider pausing and going back to the first episode, watching them all in sequence. They are available integrated into the Mormon Stories podcast feeds, but also you can consume them as their own podcasts both on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. There's also a dedicated playlist on the Mormon Stories podcast YouTube channel called LDS Discussions. Share with everyone. Check it out again, you'll love it. It's great work and I just market it and advertise it because we want people to remember that this isn't just a one off, this is part of a long series. So anyway, without any further ado, Brian, why are we here today, especially so recently after you were just on?

Bryan Buchanan [00:04:06] Well, there's never a bad time to talk about the William Clayton Diaries, but this is a particularly good one. This is back kind of in the public consciousness and it's one of those topics that I think a lot of people have heard about. The Clayton Diaries, you know, has that. That air of mystery and intrigue around it, but I don't know how much people know about. What are they, why is it kind of a controversial topic? Why haven't they been published? Will they be published? All these kinds of questions. And so we thought it would be good to do a really good overview because it is, like you mentioned, it's one of the key pieces for understanding the chaotic period of Nauvoo. So Clayton was at the center of that, right next to Joseph Smith in the inner circles of power, in the inner circles of the secret doings of Nauvoo. And he kept probably the best journal in Nauvoo. There's no other journal that rivals his for the level of detail on so many things. Polygamy being kind of the sexiest and the one that I think that it's most known for, but also lots of other things. So we're excited to talk in detail about what they are, why they're important,

Meggan Hayes [00:05:16] and why hasn't the church released them

Bryan Buchanan [00:05:17] and when do we all get to read them?

Meggan Hayes [00:05:19] Yeah. All right. Julia Nemo.

Guest [00:05:22] Anything?

Meggan Hayes [00:05:22] I didn't plug Nemo, the Mormon YouTube channel, or analyzing Mormonism. YouTube and TikTok and Facebook. That's Instagram. That's all true for both Nemo and Julia. Check them out, like subscribe and support them. And Mormon Stories podcast and Benchmark Books and the Sunstone History Podcast. Julia Nemo, anything you want to say by way of Introduction. Before we jump in, I will just

Julia [00:05:45] say this really fast. So Brian has covered this on the Sunstone Mormon History podcast in a three part series and we'll talk about that as well. But he start. They, he and Lindsay, they give this overview first and then they get into the diaries. And that's how we're kind of setting up today, where we're going to talk about more of the history of this and then get into the diaries. And I really think that you guys should listen to this whole thing because it's super important.

Kolby Reddish [00:06:07] I was just going to say that whenever I visit Salt Lake, I visit Benchmark Books. It's definitely worth a visit. It's always good to chat to Brian when he's in there. He's a wealth of knowledge about all the books in the store. So definitely go give it a visit. And also, just on a personal note, I love my job sometimes and this is one of those times. I'm very excited for this. So, yeah, let's get on. And that's about as much motion as you'll ever get out of me. So enjoy it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:06:33] Yeah, it is just such an. It's an endlessly interesting topic. When Lindsay and I covered it, that was probably the most prep time I ever spent. Because part of it is there's this massive important trial at the. In the middle of the history behind it of the transcript. That is a really interesting case study of access of copyright. And those are questions that have come right back up to the surface now. And so this is one of those cases where the backstory is very important, I would argue almost as interesting as the content of the diaries themselves. So I'm hoping listeners will enjoy this.

Meggan Hayes [00:07:13] Yeah, let's do it.

Overview of the Nauvoo Era Journals

Julia [00:07:15] Okay, so, Brian, we've got this picture here. Can you tell us what this picture is?

Bryan Buchanan [00:07:19] This is really fun. So as part of this process of having them formally published, there was a presentation at the Mormon History Association Conference last year and they showed this photo of the actual journals. I think it's always fun to see. Oh, I've never seen this, what you're actually talking about.

Meggan Hayes [00:07:38] And they're colored.

Bryan Buchanan [00:07:38] They're different colors.

Julia [00:07:40] There's three books. Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:07:42] Yep. So these are the key ones. These are the Nauvoo Era journals. There's three of them. You can see they've got these labels on them.

Meggan Hayes [00:07:48] And for those listening, tell the colors.

Bryan Buchanan [00:07:50] Yeah. So you've got the first one on top is kind of an off white cream color. And then you've got a pretty standard brown one. And then for people that live across the green, we've got a nice bright ute red at the bottom, which.

Meggan Hayes [00:08:04] Which is fun. Let's go utes.

Bryan Buchanan [00:08:06] So I. I thought this was important to show one because you get to see them. But then also, this presentation that was done last year is fantastic. Two of the editors of the. The published edition that's forthcoming talked about the journals. Robin Jensen gave some great overview about how the journals were created. So I would highly encourage people, if you are not a member of mha, consider that. And they have recorded some of their presentations like this one. Fascinating.

Meggan Hayes [00:08:34] So those are publicly available.

Bryan Buchanan [00:08:37] The. The presentations are if you're a member of mha.

Meggan Hayes [00:08:39] Got it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:08:40] So, okay. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:08:40] Reason to join. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:08:41] Yep. That's of many reasons. That's. That's a good one. So that's the journals. That's this. This sexy thing that everyone has been talking about for decades and has been not available for research. There's a photo of them. I thought that was kind of fun.

Julia [00:08:57] Okay, perfect. Okay. So for people who are just tuning in, I will explain a little bit about who William Clayton is or was. He was born in England in 1814 and joined the Church of Jesus Christ Latter day Saints in 1837 and served under Joseph Fielding, which is not Joseph Fielding, Smith. It's a different guy in the British mission. Clayton led a group of British converts to the United States in 1840 and eventually settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, where he met and befriended Joseph Smith and became his clerk and scribe. Clayton was also a member of the Council of 50 and Smith's private PR. And in Smith's private prayer circle, clade went on to have 10 wives and 42 children.

Guest [00:09:37] Wow.

Meggan Hayes [00:09:38] So inner circle.

Bryan Buchanan [00:09:39] He's been described as an enthusiastic polygamist, and he was. It was, as you might imagine, very chaotic in his household, especially in Nauvoo, which we'll talk about. And his journal talks about that. That's the element that we don't usually get, is what does domestic life in a polygamous household in Nauvoo when this is first introduced look like? And Clayton's journal gives us windows into that.

Kolby Reddish [00:10:06] There's a part of me that wonders whether he is covered in the British pageant at all. I'll have to go back and have a look, because the British pageant tends to cover some of these bigger figures. It definitely covers Kimball. So we'll see if Clayton gets a nod.

Bryan Buchanan [00:10:21] Yeah.

Julia [00:10:22] Okay. So there's this. There's a little quote here from Joseph Smith that I really want to read. Because I think it's really important to set the stage for who William was. Nima, will you read this slide?

Kolby Reddish [00:10:32] Yeah, sure. In a discourse given on May 26, 1844, Joseph Smith said, For the last three years I have a record of all my acts and proceedings. For I have kept several good, faithful and efficient clerks and in constant employ. They have accompanied me everywhere and carefully kept my history. And they have written down what I have done, where I have been, and what I have said. Therefore, my enemies cannot charge me with any day, time or place, but what I have written testimony to prove my actions, and my enemies cannot prove anything against me. They have got wonderful things in the land of ham. I think the grand jury have strained at a gnat and swallowed the camel.

Julia [00:11:15] Thank you. Do you guys have thoughts on that?

Kolby Reddish [00:11:17] I mean, I have thoughts on that. He says, oh, well, I've got evidence of where I was. No, you have people that you pay write down where you were so you could. He could fake any of those things. Oh, well, my journal says that I was in X place. Cool. But were you actually. Or did you just get your scribe to write that you were there? So really, it's not good evidence in that respect for what he's trying to declare evidence of.

Julia [00:11:40] Yeah, that's true. I hadn't thought about it that way.

Kolby Reddish [00:11:44] Might have been

Bryan Buchanan [00:11:47] very interesting to see that that was written a month before he will be killed in Carthage, too. So it's. The grand jury has indicted him on a polygamy charge. So it's a fairly troublesome time in his life. But I think it's interesting to notice he talks about how that once these guys came on the scene, his history was much better recorded. And that is very true. In his early years, he, like many people, had tried to keep a personal journal and was terrible at it. It would last two weeks, six weeks at a time. Then he'd give up. So once he had good secretaries and scribes doing it for him. Now we start to get a more consistent record. The trade off, of course, is that it's no longer him. He's not dictating things usually. They're just kind of doing it for him. Often in his voice, which is not unusual by 19th century standards. Even published, quote, unquote, academic history would follow things like that.

Kolby Reddish [00:12:39] And I know.

Bryan Buchanan [00:12:41] Go for it.

Kolby Reddish [00:12:41] I'm sorry, I was going to say. I know I made a joke about how that might undermine some further points. You know, what I'm not saying and what I don't think could be taken from What I said is that therefore you can't trust anything that's in them. My point is that Joseph would still have influence over what was in them. So if things are included in them, I would argue that Joseph Smith is okay with those things being included. Right. He's got these people writing down his history. He's going to have some level of control over what's written down. So if he's allowed it to be written, I think we can fairly well trust that that's what he wants the world to see of his time and his acts and what he's been up to.

Julia [00:13:16] Well, maybe I can ask this question too, because if William Klain is the scribe, then he's obviously being commissioned by Joseph, or it seems like he would be commissioned by him to write certain things. But. But these are his diaries. Correct. So is this. I don't know that Joseph would have a lot of influence over these diaries. I don't know, Brian, if you can speak more to that, it's probably a

Bryan Buchanan [00:13:36] better idea to think of them as an office journal in the sense of how, like if a president kept a journal, you know, maybe he's keeping it by himself. It's more likely a secretary. We see the same kind of pattern with Brigham Young earlier on when he is keeping his own journal. It's terrible. It's very haphazard. It's very inconsistent. It's not very detailed. Once his secretaries start keeping it, it's more detailed. But again, it's kind of now a little bit removed from him and is more sort of an official office journal. In fact, when they're published, they're referred to as office journals.

Julia [00:14:11] Well, I want to push back just a tiny bit because some of these ones. And this could be differences in which. Which of the three are we talking about? But because sometimes he talks about home life, where he talks about stuff that's things that are happening with his mother, things are happening with his wives. Like those seem more personal, like more of a. More of a step back. I don't know if you have remarks on that.

Bryan Buchanan [00:14:30] I was thinking more of Joseph Smith's journal when it's being kept. No, Clayton is definitely a personal.

Julia [00:14:35] Okay, right.

Bryan Buchanan [00:14:36] A personal journal for sure.

Kolby Reddish [00:14:37] So what we're dealing with today is a personal things. We're doing a personal journal today.

Julia [00:14:42] Yeah. So the one we just read, the name I just read was Joseph Smith's more office journal. But then the ones that William Clayton's journals are more personal. Is that what we're.

Bryan Buchanan [00:14:50] Yep, definitely.

Meggan Hayes [00:14:50] So the three journals we're talking about are Clayton's personal journals.

Bryan Buchanan [00:14:54] These are his personal journals. It seems like he probably keeps them at the office where he spends most of his time. I thought an interesting point that was made in that MHA presentation I mentioned is that by tracking ink flow and things like that, it seems like there were times where he would. It looked like he would. He would write about the day's activities, leave it there, and then the next day he would write about something that happened at night and then what happened the next day. All that look that it's the same ink flow. So we get clues as to how it happened. Sometimes it seems like it was a day by day. Other times it seems like, you know, fairly common. He would skip a couple days and then have to catch up.

Julia [00:15:33] So.

Bryan Buchanan [00:15:34] And you'll see, every now and again, you'll. He'll start writing something and scratched out and he's like, oh, whoops, I mixed up the day. That was the day before kind of thing.

Meggan Hayes [00:15:41] Okay, super nerdy question. Go back to that slide. Julia, what does the land of Ham have to do with anything? Yeah, I've only heard of Ham referenced as, like, where the black curse of Cain lineage comes through. But why is he mentioning. They have got wonderful things in the land of Ham. Do you have any idea, Brian?

Bryan Buchanan [00:16:00] I'm. I'm assuming it has something to do with this grand jury indictment that's there. I think he's talking about the, The. The outsiders think they've got all this dirt on him. But he's saying I. I've got records to prove that I'm not guilty of these things. You're accusing.

Meggan Hayes [00:16:17] Is it a reference to black people or dark skin or darkness?

Bryan Buchanan [00:16:20] I don't think so. I think it's like a way of describing, like, outsiders.

Meggan Hayes [00:16:24] Okay, all right, keep going.

Bryan Buchanan [00:16:26] Okay.

Julia [00:16:27] Okay. So this next part that I wanted to do is set up the relationship between Joseph and Clayton because I know some people will say that they. It was a. That Clayton was not well liked. And we'll to. But in a letter written by Joseph Smith in his own handwriting, he wrote a letter to William Clayton. He called Clayton Jonathan and Joseph signed the letter David. Dan Vogel says that Joseph compared his and Clayton's relationship to the biblical David and Jonathan. This was done as an ultimate expression of friendship. And this is according to Vogel. The letter was dated October 7th of 1842, and it says, brother Clayton. Dear sir, I received your short note. I reply, in short, to be sure you are right. And then. Go ahead, go ahead, David Crockett. Like. And now, Jonathan, what shall I write more? Only that I am well and am your best friend. Joseph Smith or David. And then later the. In his journal entry, William Clayton. On July 27th of 1843, he Clayton Records, Joseph would defend me to the uttermost and stand with me through all, for which I am thankful. So they did indeed have. It seems like they had a. He calls him his best friend. They have a strong relationship.

Bryan Buchanan [00:17:34] That letter is really interesting. You notice at the top there it says in solitude. So October 1842, he is in hiding. This is the, the. I think this is the first extradition attempt to try to get him back to Missouri for the alleged assassination of Lilburn Boggs, the governor that signs the, the infamous extermination order. So this is a period of reflection where friendship and loyalty. I think he's, he's pondering on those themes a lot. And so people like Clayton, who he feels like he can trust and that he does seem to have a genuine friendship for. And Joseph has this kind of pattern of sort of being like big brother. So Clayton's about 10 years younger. Another guy we'll talk about later, Benjamin F. Johnson. Same kind of thing. Like he has these really strong brotherly like relationships with. These are, these are very strong friendships because he has been burned by people in the past. And so by Nauvoo, loyalty is really important and guys that he feels like he can trust. And it's interesting too because I think sometimes people wonder if Clayton is making himself out to be more of a friend than he really was. But I think pieces like that letter from Joseph Smith himself demonstrate no, there really was that close relationship between them. And he was his right hand man, far more so than say like Brigham Young. You know, he and Brigham Young don't have like the next to each other all the time constant conversation relationship that he has with Clayton. So I think that's kind of an interesting dynamic and will kind of come back to bite Clayton after Joseph Smith is killed.

Julia [00:19:18] Okay, got it. Okay, so this next part, this one I got from George D. Smith where he lists out six journals. Is it true that he has six or. We saw a picture of three. Brian.

Six Periods of Clayton's Journal Writing

Bryan Buchanan [00:19:28] Yeah, so it's sort of like six journal time periods. So that first one is the British mission years. So as you mentioned, he's born in England, he's there for a few years after his baptism where he becomes sort of a relatively important local leader. And that journal is actually digitized, it's down at BYU as part of their missionary Diary collection. They're old scans. They're not great. They're not bad. The originals, apparently, are tough. Jim Allen talks about in the process of publishing those. He and research assistants would sit there with a magnifying glass trying to make out letters. One interesting thing is there are a lot of strikeouts in those that have become a topic of some controversy. So. So, yeah, that's the first journal. Journal two is sort of the umbrella term for those three journals we saw earlier covering the Nauvoo period. The next one is. Is kind of a fun one. It starts.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:24] So just to be clear, Journal 2 has three.

Bryan Buchanan [00:20:27] Three physical books. Three physical books comprise kind of the Nauvoo era journal as a whole. Yeah. Okay. So Journal three starts as an assignment from his friend Heber Kimball to keep a personal journal for Kimball, which it is only that for about two days. It quickly morphs into more like a history, a daily journal of Nauvoo temple activity. But what's interesting, it's only in his handwriting. In the Nauvoo Temple period, they've partially finished the upper story to the point where they can start administering the ordinances. But after about a week, a guy named Lucian Foster actually starts keeping it. So all along, you'll see references to this as this William Clayton Nauvoo Temple diary. And it is, but only for about a week. And that's an error that's kind of been perpetuated for a long time. But that's really interesting because that's where we get a lot of details about what the endowment looked like, how it evolves. And so it's a fascinating record. And it has all these records of people who receive temple ordinances. They would have meetings in the temple and these really interesting sermons. Marshals are trying to capture Brigham Young and others. And so it's this really interesting window into this December, January, February, 1845 into 1846 period. So there's that one. And then you have some trail journals, and that's the end of his regular journal keeping. The last two are very short. It's again, a kind of an official journal of a trip with Brigham Young Co. To southern Utah settlements. And then the last one is a very wah wah mission to England where they're trying to convince Nemo's neighbors about polygamy, and they don't like it. Imagine that. And Clayton gets sent home fairly quickly.

Meggan Hayes [00:22:23] What's a polygamy mission? They're literally. They're trying to. To stick up for polygamy.

Bryan Buchanan [00:22:30] Yeah, it's an Advocate for Weird Dance where it's, we don't want to be super open about it, but at the same time, like we kind of need to convince people this is real. You know, you have this, this PR campaign that involves newspapers. This is Orson Pratt publishing the seer. John Taylor publishes the Mormon. Yeah, they're in the kind of, this limbo period of how much do we want to talk about polygamy? Clayton gets a bad press, he's accused of some immorality and he's sent home

Kolby Reddish [00:23:00] because it's a quick aside. But you see the missionary work in the UK pretty much fall apart once polygamy starts to become a well established fact of the Mormon condition or of the, of what is going to happen to people. People stop wanting to go for a while once it becomes clear. You know, you have reporters that go out to the Salt Lake Valley once the, once the states have started to settle there, bringing reports back to British newspapers saying things like, you know, these women are being treated like cattle and stuff like that. And there's, there's a lot of hyperbole in it. But yeah, the British press have a real field day with polygamy once it becomes well known and it does sort of dry up missionary work for a while in the uk.

Who Are the Faithful Members Watching This

Meggan Hayes [00:23:41] I have a super cool question. So the types of people obviously we may be touching today or we may not, on the people in 2026 who were faithful Mormons who don't believe Joseph practiced polygamy. I'm sure we're going to be talking about that at least a little bit. My quick understanding of their arguments, they often come down to the fact that it was kind of Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball that were the conspirators to create the false impression that Joseph was practicing polygamy. But they also, I think tend to not really like these William Clayton journals or diaries. So my question is prior to Joseph's death or prior to the penning of volume three, which would be the three books that we're going to be talking about today, do we know how close William Clayton was to the other, you know, theoretical co conspirators, Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball? Because Heber C. Kimball, I mean William Clay would have had to been in a conspiracy with them for that theory to hold. And if we're going to cover that later, say stay tuned.

Bryan Buchanan [00:24:50] No, this is a fine time to do it. Brigham and Heber are kind of different cases. He knows Brigham, he interacts with him somewhat. There's not really a friendship there. There is with Heber Kimball. So Kimball had been one of the original group of British missionaries. At which point Clayton is baptized. Brigham Young's not there yet. He'll come in the second wave. And so Clayton does not know him for as long. And there isn't that same warm, true friendship that he does have with Hebert Kimball. So the two of them, it's a little bit different. Trying to think others that have been Joseph Fielding is another one that's kind of been thrown into there. He knew him quite well. I think they were. They were pretty good friends too.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:29] And I don't mean to give too much sunlight to this, but if there were a conspiracy between Heber and William Clayton to. To put on Joseph polygamy that he wasn't practicing, Clayton would have had to been fooling Joseph for a couple years as his bosom buddy. And yet totally betraying him intentionally.

Bryan Buchanan [00:25:52] Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:52] To deceive the public in a premeditated way. That if these journals eventually come out, they'll be painting Joseph as a polygamist falsely.

Bryan Buchanan [00:26:00] Yep. Yeah. I'm. There's a list of about 98 reasons why the theory doesn't hold water at all.

Meggan Hayes [00:26:06] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:26:07] And among those, like, he's. He's by far the closest with Joseph Smith. So the thought that he's going to do this and then later this. This conspiracy arises. Nonsense. Complete nonsense. He does know all of them and is cordial to. Quite close with all of them. Definitely. But other. Yeah. Falls apart otherwise for lots of reasons.

Meggan Hayes [00:26:29] All right.

Julia [00:26:30] Okay. So the next part of this is talking. Right. If we're okay to move forward. So we're talking to talk about what has been published so far of the William Clay journals and by whom. I feel like that's the right word. So the first characters we're going to talk about is James Allen and Dean Jessie. And they had direct access to the original journals from William Clayton. And they were working with the Church's historical department during the Leonard Arrington era. They made a full transcript of the journals decades ago. Alan later published excerpts and quoted extensively from them in his William Clayton biography and other works.

Church Access to the Clayton Journals

Meggan Hayes [00:27:04] So the Church has had these.

Bryan Buchanan [00:27:07] We know they are in church possession by at least 1854. I think that's the first time they appear on, like a historian's office inventory of things.

Meggan Hayes [00:27:15] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:27:16] So they've been there since then. That MHA presentation. There's a little bit of that history. You have only sort of periods of where the historian's office historical department is doing actual research and publishing. So during the 19th century. They compile these massive narrative histories of the church up through like the early 1880s. So the first portion of that is what we know is history of the Church, right? The blue hardback sets the multicolored paperbacks through when Brigham Young becomes president of the church. There's manuscript histories after that. They just never get published. Once they're done with that, there's not a whole lot going on. They help Bancroft with his history of Utah, but they're not really publishing a whole lot internally until BH Roberts starts publishing in book form that Joseph Smith, early Brigham Young era history of the Church in book format. And then after that, it kind of goes dark again.

Meggan Hayes [00:28:23] I'm kind of wondering, and it's probably too much to ask any of you. I'm wondering when the first known instance of somebody saying, hey, why are these things published? Yet like people saying, hey, wait, these would be good to see. Why aren't they there? Who's hiding them? I wonder when that sort of conversation first emerges to the best of our knowledge.

Bryan Buchanan [00:28:45] So they are used during Clayton's lifetime, during Joseph Smith's lifetime as a source. And what's so interesting is Clayton's journal entries will occasionally be the backbone of narrative in the history of the church. And that's what they did. They would take primary documents, smash them all together, occasionally change them into first person voice, and then you, you sort of create this, this narrative, documentary, history, right? Context. Here's a letter, this is the narrative, here's minutes, that kind of thing. And again, that was how history was written. This modern sort of forensic history of being more careful about who's writing, maintaining the original sources. Like that's a 20th century citations, that's a 20th century concept. This is not how history is written at that time. Okay, so, yeah, so following B.H. roberts book publication, it kind of goes dark. Joseph Fielding Smith writes and publishes essentials in Church history, a one volume overview, fairly crummy history. It's used as a textbook. And again, historian's office kind of goes dark after that. They're a repository. It's not until you get this flourishing of the new Mormon history that people really start digging into these archival sources again.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:00] I would guess that the Tanners might have been wondering about or making noise about this in the early 60s, but I'm just guessing, I, I don't know

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:09] that that was really on their radar.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:11] Interesting yet that it would have been on theirs if it was on anyone's Right. Radar prior to Arrington.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:16] And yeah, it would have been Sort of out of the public eye.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:20] Oh, did for Brody. Did Brody reference the Clayton? No.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:24] She definitely would not have been allowed to see them. I don't know that she would have been aware how important of a source that that was. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:32] Interesting.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:32] I. I don't have any evidence that she petitioned for them, you know, wanted to see. Yeah. Anything like that.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:39] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:40] Yeah, it's. It's in the 70s, as. As Leonard Arrington era history starts to take shape, that people start realizing how important Clayton would be.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:53] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:53] And it's not until these two guys petition to have access to them that that really becomes in the historian consciousness, like, this is an important source. We would like access. We would like to use this. So that's pretty recent, right?

Julia [00:31:08] I have a question, too. So. Because I don't know what the difference is between the church archives and then the First Presidency vault, so. Because I know in your episode with Lindsay, you talk about how these journals are in the First Presidency vault, and then we're going to show these letters where they're petitioning the First Presidency to have access to these. So I don't know if you can talk about the difference or why maybe they were not with the. If they were with the other books or what. Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:31:32] So you have the concept of what's called the historian's office pretty much from the time Mormons get to Utah. So George A. Smith is over it for many years. It's attached kind of to Brigham Young's house and office. So that was sort of the earliest headquarters. Right. Eventually, in what, 1916, the church administration building is finished. So that's the smaller building on South Temple. South Temple. And that's where, like the first presidency in 12 had their offices. There were up on the. I think it's the third floor. That's where the historian's office was. Was headquartered. There's some great photos. They had a cage, like a mesh cage where documents would be held. You know, it's kind of security. So they're there for quite a long time. Once they build the church office building, the big, tall, ugly one, they move there. But you still have a big walk in vault at the administration building that was the vault of the First Presidency. So also, in addition to that, Joseph Fielding Smith, who is an apostle and then church historian for 50 years, had this kind of smallish, wheeled safe where he would keep what was, in his opinion, super sensitive things, crucial things, 1832,

Kolby Reddish [00:33:08] accounts of the first vision.

Bryan Buchanan [00:33:12] And it seemed. I'm trying to remember. I think. I think the Clayton diaries are in there.

Julia [00:33:19] And then the little one.

Bryan Buchanan [00:33:21] Yeah, his personal safe. And when he becomes church president, he transitions out of being church historian. And his wheeled safe literally gets wheeled into the First Presidency vault and eventually emptied, cataloged, and then it sort of gets mushed into the First Presidency vault. And that's where the journals remain until these two guys, Dean Jassy, Jim Allen, petition for access to them. And how it worked is they petition through their general authority advisor, he petitions to the First Presidency. Here we've got guys here that would like to see them, the secretary. And we'll show the. In fact, we'll show the actual memo back from the First Presidency secretary. And then. So physical possession is temporarily transferred from the first presidency vault to the vault of the historical department in the church office building. And so they had them for a little bit and then it goes back until somebody else got to see him. Then they go back and they remain there until, in the relatively early phases of the Joseph Smith Papers, one by one, they are transferred physically to the new state of the art church history library so that the Joseph Smith Papers team could use them and obviously begin finally to have a formal edited, top of the line, scholarly publication of them.

Julia [00:34:50] Perfect. Okay, so this next part, the next person who was able to publish on them was George G. Smith. He was the co. Yeah, he was the co. Founder of Signature Books and he was one of the early members of Dialogue and served on the library committee of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. And he completed. He competed in wrestling and got his graduate degree at nyu. And I thought that was interesting. But although George D. Smith did not have access to the original Nauvoo journals, he published an intimate chronicle, their Journals of William Clayton, in 1991. And I think at that point that had been the most. Even though he didn't have access to them, as far as I can tell, that's the one that publication that had the most of William Klain. Is that correct?

Key Published Excerpts and Scholarly Access

Bryan Buchanan [00:35:28] Yeah. So I brought along a copy of this to remind everybody. These are stuff that you hold on

Meggan Hayes [00:35:34] and read what it says.

Bryan Buchanan [00:35:35] Yeah. So an intimate chronicle, the journals of William Clayton. So that list that we showed earlier includes all or portions of all of the Clayton journals. And this was a big deal.

Meggan Hayes [00:35:50] So what's in that book?

Bryan Buchanan [00:35:51] So this is. Yeah, so the first journal, it's a lightly condensed edition now, again, like the British mission ones had been published already. So those were out there, the Navu journals. George included everything that he had. And we'll talk about this. It was. It was. It was about, you know, about 25, 30% pure content. But George estimates more like 50% of the important stuff. Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:36:22] Was he. Was he allowed to see all of it?

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:24] No, he was not allowed to see any of it. Okay, this is where all of the backstory now comes in.

Meggan Hayes [00:36:30] Okay, got it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:32] And when this came out. So this is 1991.

Meggan Hayes [00:36:34] I should just say he's married to Spencer B. Kimball's granddaughter. Correct.

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:40] I think. Nice.

Meggan Hayes [00:36:42] Niece. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:43] Part of the family.

Meggan Hayes [00:36:43] He's.

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:44] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:36:44] He's closely connected to the Kimball family.

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:47] Yeah. Yeah. George knows everybody.

Meggan Hayes [00:36:50] Yeah, that's.

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:51] That's part of the reason Signature was so successful is because he had these. All these relationships that he built over years.

Meggan Hayes [00:36:57] He's still alive and he's like 100 millionaire, like super wealthy.

Bryan Buchanan [00:37:01] He's. And that's the reason that Signature Books was. Could exist is because it was this labor of love of a guy who loved Mormon history. And they saw themselves as sort of kind of a supplement and kind of publishing some of the more controversial things.

Meggan Hayes [00:37:17] I know he funded Sunstone's budget, 50% of Sunstone's budget for decades.

Bryan Buchanan [00:37:22] Anyone who loves Mormon history, who loves Mormon studies, George Smith over the years has done. And at mha, just this. This just barely. He was given an award, which was very deserved. Yeah, he's done a lot. He's getting old. He. He published the. A two volume edition of all the Brigham Young diaries not too long ago.

Julia [00:37:41] Oh.

Bryan Buchanan [00:37:42] So, yeah, George's. George has done very.

Kolby Reddish [00:37:44] Just looking at my shelf and how many books are signature books? And you think of how important they are. So it's things like Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. Signature books. Joseph Smith, Egyptian Papyri, Robert Rittner's book, Signature.

Meggan Hayes [00:37:56] Simon Graham Palmer Grant Palmer, Michael Quinn,

Kolby Reddish [00:38:00] Power Studies in the Book of Mormon. That's another signature title.

Meggan Hayes [00:38:03] Like.

Kolby Reddish [00:38:04] Yeah, Mormonism Unveiled reprint with Dan Vogel's intro. Another. They produce so much good stuff, I

Meggan Hayes [00:38:10] forget that he published Clayton. That's cool.

Bryan Buchanan [00:38:13] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:38:13] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:38:14] So, yeah, that's. This was. This was a big deal because there had been. Outside of that British mission publication in the 70s, there had been no formal publication with annotation intros, you know, kind of a standard scholarly presentation of the Clayton journals. Okay, so.

Meggan Hayes [00:38:30] And this is 93, 91. So this is two years before the September 6th.

Bryan Buchanan [00:38:35] I'm at BYU, heating up.

Meggan Hayes [00:38:37] So, yeah, this is a big. Okay, this would have probably been lightning to the church.

Kolby Reddish [00:38:41] I'm not born yet.

Bryan Buchanan [00:38:42] And not because it's Clayton, not just because of the content, but where those Nauvoo Journal excerpts came from. Yeah, that story that we'll talk about.

Meggan Hayes [00:38:50] Right.

Bryan Buchanan [00:38:52] And so the version that we showed is the one that I think most people are familiar with. When it first came out, it was part of this limited edition, really nice version of what they call the significant Mormon diary series. And they were a little higher price. They sold out. And so they did this paperback version to make sure that anyone who wanted it could get it. And it's still in print today. So that was a big milestone.

Meggan Hayes [00:39:15] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:39:16] Yeah.

Julia [00:39:17] Okay, so this next one that I have is Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Is it Ulrich? Ulrich.

Bryan Buchanan [00:39:21] Ulrich, Yep, Ulrich.

Julia [00:39:22] And she is a Pulitzer Prize winning American historian specializing in early America and the history of women, and a professor at Harvard University. I feel like she is probably one of the top notch people for sure. And then she has personally seen the William Clayton journals and used them to write her 2017 book, A House Full of Females, Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in early Mormonism, 1835-1870.

Bryan Buchanan [00:39:49] Laurel is fantastic. She is a. An incredibly gifted writer. And her. She's really particularly interested in material culture. And she'll. She'll talk about objects and what they look like and how they plan. So that book, when it came out, the hardback, the end sheets, were these fantastic pages from Wilford Woodruff's diary with all of his doodles around the edges. Just a really, really good book. I didn't think I should have brought a copy of that.

Julia [00:40:16] You're saying at the back, you're saying this here?

Bryan Buchanan [00:40:18] Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's the end sheets.

Julia [00:40:22] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:40:22] That's a nice touch.

Guest [00:40:23] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:40:24] So she came to Benchmark Books. When it came out, we did a signing with her. We had 110 people jammed in there. And as I was standing by her to have her sign books after, I knew that there was some Clayton access. And so I just kind of quietly asked her, just for my own curiosity, did you get to see the Clayton diaries? And she looked up, said nothing, and just smiled at me. That's all I needed. Yep, so she got to see them. So that demonstrates the level of trust that she had gained to be able to see the originals.

Julia [00:40:55] That's very cool. Okay, so. And then John has been. Has had John Turner on a lot of Mormon stories. They have a whole series. You guys should go check that out. But John G. Turner is a professional professor of religious studies at. And history at George Mason University in Virginia. And he has even said on Mormon stories, he has personally seen the William Clayton journals and has used them for his 2025 book, Joseph Smith the Rise and Fall of an American Prophet. John Turner discusses the William Clayton journals in part 34. Specifically, if you want to hear him say all this, where he. Yeah, so, yeah. So John, these are two historians so far that we've listed and then. And then a pro wrestler or whatever that, that have consulted the William Clan journals.

Bryan Buchanan [00:41:35] Yeah. The fact again, that John got to see them as a non Mormon historian who in just a little. Well, a little more than decade, 15 years, ish. Had demonstrated that he was a. A top notch scholar, a fair scholar and, and someone that should be given access.

Meggan Hayes [00:41:53] So I wonder if Bushman asked for access in his writing of rough stone rolling and if not, why he wouldn't or if he was denied. Why?

Bryan Buchanan [00:42:02] It's a good question, honestly. I mean, I'd have to think about that.

Meggan Hayes [00:42:06] He doesn't reference them. His citations. Correct.

Bryan Buchanan [00:42:09] He definitely uses them. But I. We'd honestly have to go look interesting.

Meggan Hayes [00:42:13] All right, Nemo, you look that up. Nemo.

Bryan Buchanan [00:42:15] Yeah, look that. I'd be curious if he does cite Intimate Chronicle. I didn't think about that anyway.

Meggan Hayes [00:42:19] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:42:19] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [00:42:20] The other point I'd like to make real quick is, is it deliberate that John Turner's book looks a lot like no Man Knows My History.

Bryan Buchanan [00:42:28] First thing we saw as book people were always curious, how's it bound? What does the dust jacket look like? Blah, blah, blah, immediate. And I don't think it was intentional. It was just sort of the portrait that their designer used.

Kolby Reddish [00:42:40] And we thought it's not trying to subtly replace form Brody's book on the shelves and go, oh, maybe read this one instead because it's.

Meggan Hayes [00:42:47] That's not his style. I do wonder whether someone else. I do wonder whether it was intellectual property.

Bryan Buchanan [00:42:56] Well, authors don't often don't really get a whole lot of say in design. As I recall. John didn't love that. And as he talked about with you, like he wasn't necessarily trying to replace Brody in the sense that it was bad or anything or, you know, it's 80 years later. No matter how good a biography is, it's. It's worth a fresh look. Sources, perspectives, you know, a lot of, a lot of elements in that. But it definitely looks a lot like the piggyback.

Julia [00:43:24] I'll also just say, as somebody who's been dealing with copyright stuff with Mormon stories, there's very few images of Joseph that are in the public domain. I feel like.

Nemo [00:43:31] So.

Meggan Hayes [00:43:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, yep.

Julia [00:43:33] Okay. So going forward. So D. Michael Quinn is another one of my favorite historians. Before the publication of the Clayton secret writings uncovered likely saw. He likely saw the Alan Jesse transcription and took 54 pages of notes or 950 lines that were not included in Ehat's notes. And maybe, Brian, you can explain all this too. And then a limited edition printing of the novel Navu Diaries of William Clayton contained 30% more text through a combination of E hat and Quinn's excerpts.

Meggan Hayes [00:44:01] Sounds like we're going to need to get to that background to understand what that was.

Bryan Buchanan [00:44:05] We'll talk about this one later as it comes up in our timeline later. This is an interesting one. I had to really go back and think about this one, because I've got his papers are at the Beinecke Library at Yale. And what Quinn would do is he would get access to a diary, letter book or something, and he would go through and type up excerpts that he thought were interesting. And often what he would do at the top is he would date it when he got to see them. And then he would usually also include a brief register of what was in there. You know, this. This is journal one. It was 400 pages and it covered these dates. All that he did was he put, you know, restricted as of 1979. So. And then he has handwritten notes at the beginning and then in the margins about what was in the Tanner's publication that we'll talk about. So my guess is it's got to fall somewhere between when Dean and Jim made their transcription and when the Gerald and Sandra published the Andrew E hat excerpts that we'll talk about. So there's a narrow window that I'm pretty sure that I'm guessing he probably persuaded Dean to let him see the transcription they had made. That's my guess.

Julia [00:45:17] Okay, so he's comparing transcriptions. He's not actually seeing the diaries or he's just seeing the transcription.

Bryan Buchanan [00:45:22] I don't think he got to see the originals. I found Gary Bergera chimed in on a blog post in the Glory days of Mormon blogging about the Clayton Diaries. And Gary said that he'd asked Mike about that, I'd asked him about it, and he was pretty cagey. So I think what he told Gary was that he'd seen the transcription, not the originals.

Julia [00:45:43] Okay. Okay. So next on my line is your Sunset History podcast. And you guys cover this topic, you and Lindsey, on episode 36, 38 and 37. And this is back in 2021. And I think in there. Do you. Have you seen that diaries?

Bryan Buchanan [00:46:00] No.

Julia [00:46:00] Oh, okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:46:01] What we did get to see. That was really fun. Is in researching the lawsuit that we'll talk about between Andrew Ehat and Gerald and Sandra Tanner, we discovered that in addition to other people that were known, BYU professor Richard L. Anderson had also gotten to see the originals and had typed up some excerpts. And so we went down to BYU and the fantastic people at Special Collections at BYU couldn't have been more helpful. That collection was huge. 200 boxes. It hadn't been really fully cataloged yet. So we were relying on handwritten notes on the side of the boxes that Richard had done that sometimes didn't correspond to the contents of the boxes. And so we were just kind of leafing through and what he would do is he. It seems like he created a master packet of excerpts and then he would photocopy pages and put them into topical files. He was working on a. A book on the correspondence between Joseph and Emma. Unfortunately never finished it. And so we would be going through a folder and here was a page of excerpts and it had some new stuff in it. So it was, it was a lot of fun. And that was another piece of. Of the puzzle.

Kolby Reddish [00:47:16] Just to throw it out there, an intimate chronicle. So William Clayton is cited as a source for Roughstone.

Bryan Buchanan [00:47:22] Rolling. Okay, so that's interesting that Richard Bushman had to rely on

Meggan Hayes [00:47:29] Smith.

Bryan Buchanan [00:47:30] Yeah, George Smith.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:31] So Bushman didn't get. Apparently Bush didn't get direct access to the Clayton journals. He's citing Smith, who's citing Ehat or Tanner, who's citing.

Bryan Buchanan [00:47:44] And again, like, this is no one's favorite course of action. It was the only course of action.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:51] I wonder if Bushman calls Laurel and says, how'd you get him?

Bryan Buchanan [00:47:56] Issues of access are at the center of this. And it's an important discussion, one that we're still right in the middle of the.

Meggan Hayes [00:48:03] That's funny.

Julia [00:48:04] Yeah. So the next question I have is why has the church not released them? And the church. This is back in 2025, this is just a year ago, the church's newsroom, they released this article titled Church plans to publish Nauvoo Journal of William Clayton. And they say the church history department first announced its plans to publish Clayton's three volume Nauvoo Journal, which we saw a picture of in 2017. The church has owned the journal since 1854, when William Clayton donated it to the church historian's office. So it has been this long since. And we're still waiting.

Upcoming Yale Publication of the Nauvoo Journal

Bryan Buchanan [00:48:35] So a few thoughts on that. First, on the publication. So this will be published by Yale University Press. It will be a single volume. My. My sense will look a lot like the Joseph Smith papers in terms of how it's presented, the kind of annotation. And it will be, you know, it'll be the complete Navy journals. There will be nothing redacted. I think we can hope to see it around the end of the year, I think is the goal. People are constantly. Why is it taking so long? I was. Welcome to publishing. Welcome to University Press publishing. It takes a long time.

Kolby Reddish [00:49:10] The church has its own publishing house, right?

Guest [00:49:13] They do.

Kolby Reddish [00:49:14] They have their own way to publish these things. So why are they going through Yale

Bryan Buchanan [00:49:17] rather than doing like church historians press, like they had done with the Joseph Smith papers? Because this. I think they really wanted to. To give this the. The cachet of a university press because it is important thing. And I think they also claims journal is touchy and we'll talk about some background of why. And so you're going to have to discuss touchy subjects. You're going to have to discuss polygamy. You're going to have to discuss succession issue and a lot of things that are. Not everyone likes to talk about them openly. So this gave them, I think, a little bit more academic freedom in the intros and footnotes to be able to discuss things.

Meggan Hayes [00:49:59] I mean, clearly Yale's prestigious right. Turner published his Joseph Smith biography through Yale.

Bryan Buchanan [00:50:05] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:06] I don't think Brigham Young. His Brigham Young biography was through Yale. Was it?

Bryan Buchanan [00:50:10] Let's see. Brigham Young was through Knopf.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:14] Okay.

Guest [00:50:15] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:16] And. But.

Bryan Buchanan [00:50:17] Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. I'm thinking of Arrington for some reason. No, John's was. That was Belknap. Harvard University Press.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:23] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:50:23] So.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:24] And then I'm guessing it will be dripping with commentary and. Or apologetics. The. The release of the Clayton diaries.

Bryan Buchanan [00:50:35] I think it's going to be pretty solid. The editors working on it are fantastic.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:41] So no apologetics or minimal.

Bryan Buchanan [00:50:45] I would say very, very minimal.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:47] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:50:48] I think it's. And you're going to. What you'll see is really good introductions and then some pretty solid annotation. These are the people. This is why this land transaction is important. This is why, you know, this lawsuit was happening. So it will be very helpful for contextualizing all of these things that on the surface seem fairly mundane, but have really important backstories to them.

Meggan Hayes [00:51:10] Got it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:51:11] And that was a lot of the stuff that we haven't seen yet is the more seemingly mundane.

Meggan Hayes [00:51:16] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:51:17] So a lot of business legal stuff, partially because unless you understand what the case is, who the Parties are in the land deed, why it's happening, when it's happening, all that. You can't. You can't make sense of the importance of it. And so that's why that addition will be so useful.

Kolby Reddish [00:51:35] So we think that by going through university press, the church can claim less bias and be like, hey, look, this is being done professionally and it's credibility. It's credibility there. But then also there's a part of me that wonders if it's also their ability to then take a step back and go, well, this is being published academically. We are not, as a church publishing this into our narrative of what we say about ourselves and what we say about our history. This is being published by a university about us. Does that make sense?

Bryan Buchanan [00:52:07] Definitely. This is this pendulum of the question of institutional publishing versus, again, yeah, academic publishing outside of church purview.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:16] Are we saying, Nemo and Brian, that if the church were to publish this, believing members might take it more seriously?

Kolby Reddish [00:52:26] It would be seen as more of an admission universe.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:28] A secular university is publishing it, then believing members might be less alarmed by what's in it. Because I think this questionable outside source, that's, you know, an academic, you know, institution.

Kolby Reddish [00:52:43] Yeah. I think there's two halves to it. There's the, oh, well, we can write it off because it's outside material almost. So members, it's all about what ways in which members can take troubling information and then it not be troubling to them. That's what the church cares about. So it's either it can be not troubling because it's come. It's all academic and it's all out of Yale. And, you know, it's. It's outsiders talking about our church. And it's also that if the church were to publish it, my thought is that like the Gospel Topics essays, it becomes really difficult for people not to view it as the church is saying this. So if the church publishes this, it's like the church is admitting it. The church is admitting to things that they have not previously admitted to. And I think the church has seen in the past what happens when they directly release materials like this is people feel that betrayal or they feel that lack of trust more strongly because it feels that the church themselves as an institution have said something that they didn't before. No.

Meggan Hayes [00:53:39] Except for the case of the Gospel Topics essays, where believing members are like, somebody hacked into the church's website. Clearly. Anyway, I digress.

Bryan Buchanan [00:53:48] Official imprimatur of things is. Is a very sticky subject.

Meggan Hayes [00:53:53] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:53:53] And that's why the Joseph Smith Papers was this revolutionary project because it discussed things like polygamy, it mentioned things like the second anointing, and it mentioned temple ordinances and, and stickiness of personality, conflic succession and the council of 50. So that to be a, essentially an official product was, was quite the landmark and I'm positive involved a lot of very impassioned behind the scenes discussions among people of varying perspectives. Because I. There would have been people who did not want this to be an official that would. Lara would. Early on, it seems like there was talk of the Joseph Smith Papers being published by someplace like Oxford for these very reasons that we've been talking about. And so I don't, I don't know if we've ever really heard too much on how exactly that discussion played out because that's, that's, that's, that's an important case study of institutional official history.

Meggan Hayes [00:55:05] There are apostles that were mad about the Joseph Smith Papers project or the gospel topic.

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:10] That is a extremely safe bet.

Meggan Hayes [00:55:13] Yeah. So this is arm's length Yale. It's arm's length.

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:17] It is.

Redactions Across Different Journal Editions

Julia [00:55:17] Okay, hang on. I just have a question really fast. You mentioned redactions. Did you say that the Yale one is not. Nothing will be redacted. And then I don't know if you can speak to what has been redacted in the past.

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:28] I just was wondering about that in terms of Clayton.

Julia [00:55:31] You mean in terms of Clayton. Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:33] Yeah. Well, so. Because there haven't. So the only formally published thing from the originals were the British mission diaries. Those were not redacted in any way. We haven't had anything else that's been published from the original since. So what we've been relying on is for that critical Nauvoo period. I mean, that's, that's what we care about when we're talking about the Clayton Dyers. It's those three Nauvoo era journals. We, we've been relying on excerpts that various people have created. And so it's just they're not redacted in the sense like, you know, they weren't zapping people's names or anything. It's just, you know, they might take this paragraph from this entry, skip a few lines and then grab this. Not redacting necessarily. It's just sort of condensing. Okay, so this version from Yale, my clear understanding is there will be no redactions whatsoever. Every word from the originals will be in there. And I think that's a very safe assumption because of the Joseph Smith Papers being an institutional product, there was no redactions whatsoever in those either. And so I think we can safely assume that. Okay, I thought it would be interesting too, that question of why haven't they been released. A little bit of background there. So when Access is petitioned in 1979, that is a very important period that is smack dab in the middle of a period of transition. So from the second. Well, let's go back even further. So we talked a little bit about institutional publishing. So B.H. roberts publishes history of the Church. It's more or less an official product. It's 1902 to 1932. And then they don't really publish anything internally after that, and it becomes a repository. They keep records. And the scholars that do come in, you know, Robin Jensen in the MHA presentation makes a good point that historians aren't doing a lot of the archival digging that modern historians are doing. And part of that is because that people were denied access during the years, that 50 year period when Joseph Fielding Smith is the church historian and guys like Will Lund are the assistant historian and his brother Alvin is there. Access is kind of difficult. And there are stories. Fawn Brody, Juanita Brooks, historians Dale Morgan, who either petition for access and are denied or just can read the handwriting on the wall and know they're going to be denied. And so it's, it is tough to get access to sources during that period. And Leonard Arrington always gets most of the credit for kind of opening up things, but that's kind of a middle part of the story. So in the the late 60s, there is a organizational management study that's done. And one of their findings was that the historical department should be run by professionals. And they take that counsel and so they start having discussions on what should the Historical department look like, what should the director, what kind of person should the director be? And they ask historians of that time, who do you think should do it, including Leonard Arrington. And finally they make the decision in 1972 to appoint him as the first church historian who wasn't a general authority, who had professional training. Leonard was more of an economic historian. But, you know, he'd written, he'd written history too. But even before that, Access had already started to open up. And you have Howard Hunter, who is their apostolic advisor, was really a kind of quiet champion of transparency and access, wasn't he?

Meggan Hayes [00:59:35] Church historian for like a year?

Bryan Buchanan [00:59:37] Yeah, not very long. And it was part of that transition period where they're, they're moving towards this idea of professionalizing. Yeah, and that goes all the way down, right. The staffers before had just been, you know, like Andrew Jensen's son in law or somebody's friend. And these guys had no formal training in archival science. And that's largely a function. There was no such thing really. It's just kind of starting. And so in addition to having guys like Leonard there, you have guys who are starting to go get a master's of library science and then bring that training there. And so that means we're now cataloging better, we're using the tools of the trade to, to try to make this kind of feel more like a university archive. But at the same time you all along you have sort of three groups of people at that, at archives. You have your historians and archivists. These are the people that we interact with, right. You know, these are the Jenny readers and the Alex Smiths today. These are people who have, you know, have had formal academic training, have, have researched and published things themselves. So there's that group. Then you have the administration within departments. And these are people again, who probably have training but have to make administrative calls. And so they're going to have different perspectives and priorities. Then of course you have church leaders who are ultimately the locker and unlockers of doors. And depending on who general authority advisors are or who are the loudest in the room at times, can have great impact on access as it filters down. And so from the second in 1972, when Leonard Arrington is appointed the church historian, there is immediate differences of opinion between these groups of historians and guys kind of at Leonard's level and church leaders. And so as they start to develop this very broad, expansive plan across the board of more access, more publishing, both internal and external, facilitating scholarship, facilitating research fellowships and all these things that they were doing this very quickly raises eyebrows among church leaders. And some of them are people you could kind of guess. Boyd Packer, Ezra Taft, Benson. These are kind of your Mark Peterson. Those are sort of your three people through the Arrington years who are very troubled by academia and especially academics within the historical department.

Julia [01:02:26] This reminds me of. Sorry, it was a Boyd Packer who said not everything that is true is useful is that I was just made me think of that.

Bryan Buchanan [01:02:33] It is. And that comes not too long after when these guys are petitioning for access. This is very much part of this story. This is sort of like the, the continuing fallout of things. So. But in alongside guys like that, you have sort of less expected people like Bruce McConkey, who was more or less a supporter of the Historical Department and whose perspective was largely let them do history, and then guys like Howard Hunter. The problem was is that the supporters who actually included Spencer Kimball were usually not terribly vocal. Kimball on his list of priorities, what the historical department was fairly low. And a lot of times it boiled down to, I don't want. I don't want to have to deal with things. And so often what happened is the louder voices in the room ruled the day. And so progressively over those years, the concerns, especially as they start internally publishing things. And the concerns are when Dean Jassy publishes the first of what was supposed to be a series called Letters of Brigham Young to his sons. Brigham Young talks about how he had had a tobacco habit that he had kicked. And he told his son, you know, I don't really want you to develop one of those. On the surface, that seems like the lesson you kind of want to tell. Right? No, that was very troublesome because it

Meggan Hayes [01:04:06] admits a prophet had a tobacco problem. After the Word of Wisdom was released

Bryan Buchanan [01:04:10] in, like the 1860s.

Meggan Hayes [01:04:12] Yeah, yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:04:13] You have things like in Building the City of God, a study of cooperative efforts in the 19th century, using language that things were communalistic or commune, like Ezra Taft. Benson reads that and sees the word communist and goes nuts as a John Bircher. As a John Bircher.

Meggan Hayes [01:04:33] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:04:33] That's. He's already. He already knows. Communists are invading America. They've now invaded the Historical department. So these are these seemingly little things that truly irk them. And so what happens is they bring in after several general authority advisors who

Meggan Hayes [01:04:52] had been, I wonder, treasure digging, folk magic stuff or Post Manifesto polygamy were also concerns.

Bryan Buchanan [01:05:00] They're getting there.

Meggan Hayes [01:05:01] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:05:01] So, I mean, you have obviously Reid Durham gives his.

Meggan Hayes [01:05:05] And masonry too.

Bryan Buchanan [01:05:06] And Masonry his. Is there no help for the widow's son address as the president of mha, that causes a huge stir. And then you have things that Gerald and Sandra are publishing and Quinn is working on Post Manifesto and others. So you have these things that are starting to become issues. And what general authorities see is that this policy of more open access means publishing things that are sticky and controversial and footnotes thanks to the Historical Department for access to the source are really not acceptable. And Leonard knows this. And so he's quietly behind the scenes talking to his staffers and Mike Quinn and being like, can we say this differently? Maybe don't always be quite so open about where you got that. A little cagey, because he knows it's very complicated and he knows very well that there are a lot of eyes looking over his Shoulder. And he is, on the one hand, a very devoted, loyal, faithful person, but who would like honest history written because he feels that that is the best policy.

Meggan Hayes [01:06:17] And people should know that Brody and the Tanners were kicking the church's butt with history that the church felt wasn't faith promoting. So I think Leonard Apart was trying to help and Hunter were trying to shape the narrative. At least it could be more faithful with some context.

Bryan Buchanan [01:06:37] You know, Leonard did not like Gerald and Sandra at all.

Meggan Hayes [01:06:41] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:06:42] And so he. It's weird because you can see a lot of overlap in kind of what they're doing, different motives and different goals. But there's. There's a lot of similarity there, I think.

Meggan Hayes [01:06:53] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:06:53] Sometimes, you know, you're too similar to get along kind of thing.

Meggan Hayes [01:06:57] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:06:58] So they. After these, these general authority advisors who had been either supportive or, you know, at least neutral, just kind of let. Let your laissez faire do what you want, be historians. Homer Durham is brought in toward the end of the 70s with the more or less expressed purpose of reigning in this rogue historical department. And it's so wild, looking back in 2026 to see what was. Was making them be cast as rogue. It's so tame by modern standards. But in the 70s, they were just kind of ahead of their time. And so what happens is this plan develops that they will essentially transfer the historical department to BYU so that they can be at arm's length. It's that exact discussion. Right. If it's a university setting, then, you know, you can. You're more free to do what you want. They pitch this to them as a good thing.

Nemo [01:07:56] Right.

Bryan Buchanan [01:07:56] You know, you're. You want to do history, well, you'll be more free down there. But everyone knows that it's really a rejection of this vision of what have sometimes been described as the Camelot years of the historical department. And so 1979, when Jim and Dean petition for access to the Clayton journals and are given access, you can see those two worlds coexisting. Right. You have that the tail end of the open access running into the chilling effect of the 1980s and 1990s. So that's the background to what's our timeline that we'll go over here.

Julia [01:08:41] Perfect. Okay. So before we get into this deeper history of the William Clayton journals, I wanted to talk about why this is maybe relevant, why I see this as relevant now, and why this is being talked about. So I've been seeing this all over YouTube as well, but also Michelle Stone, who has been on Mormon stories before, she had her channel, what is it called, problems 132 problems. And she has since come back, and she. What I. What I understand from her video is that she's not really making any new videos, but she's releasing some of her old ones. And so she's one that talks about the William Clayton journals as well. And if we're okay showing these, there are some clips from her and from Karen Hyatt. They have this perspective that Joseph Smith. And please correct me if I get this wrong, there's a whole group of members of the church who have this perspective that Joseph Smith did not live polygamy. And they seem to want to discredit William Clayton and his relationship with Joseph and his knowledge of polygamy. And they want to seem to put it on Heber C. Kimball and Brigham Young. And so I just wanted to show these two clips from Karen Hyatt and Michelle Stone to try to give, like, just some more background of this. So if it's okay if we show these, I will play them.

England Journals and Early Spiritual Controversies

Guest [01:09:51] William Clayton's England journals show all kinds of. I don't know what you would call it, spiritual, falteral, spiritual adultery happening in England before they came and claimed that Joseph taught it to them. So I was actually talking to a friend about this the other day because I don't have it nailed down at this point exact exactly the timeline and where it came from. And, you know, but what we.

Nemo [01:10:12] Like.

Guest [01:10:12] I was kind of like, it is interesting to see these overlaps, but also, I don't think they were all in the same group. I think it was just kind of a thing that was happening with different people.

Meggan Hayes [01:10:21] So, like, in your theory of what may have happened, it seems like as I've.

Guest [01:10:25] As I said. Sorry, I just wanted to point it. As I said, polygamy was. Was growing in England as well, independently. So while the apostles were there, like, it didn't have to have a thing. It's kind of like someone doesn't have to teach a man to commit adultery.

Bryan Buchanan [01:10:38] Yeah, right.

Meggan Hayes [01:10:39] But to claim it's of God is a different thing.

Guest [01:10:41] Yeah. And we do do see that starting. I. I thought it was so interesting when I saw in the back of Brigham Young's England journal, written upside down, it says, questions to ask Joseph, question to ask Joseph. It talks about children who die, and it says, was David a man after God's own heart? That was interesting to me. I don't know if I'm interpreting that correctly, but it sure seems like it could be interpreted as Brigham trying to make his claim, planning to make his claim to Joseph. To convert Joseph.

Meggan Hayes [01:11:07] Okay. Okay. So, you know, in what I've. What I've listened to of your YouTube channel, it seems like Brigham Young and Heber C. Are kind of the OG Bad guys in your mind. Is that fair to say?

Guest [01:11:22] Well, the Godfathers. Because I did an episode called the Godfathers of Mormon Polygamy. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:11:26] And who are the godfathers of Mormon Polygamy?

Guest [01:11:28] Yeah. Well, I think Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimberly. I think Willard Richards was right in there. I think. I think William Clayton was like the ultimate wannabe. He was really wanted to be included, but no one really liked him, but he was involved.

Meggan Hayes [01:11:40] Okay. So in your. And do you have a sense. So they're what, 1840, 1841, 1842. They're starting these 1842, 1843, for sure.

Guest [01:11:48] And there were others, like, I haven't fit. I think it's Turley in. He was an early polygamist, and I. There's more work being done that is coming out.

Meggan Hayes [01:11:55] But in your view, they're the ones that start the polygamy shenanigans and just Joseph doesn't know about it?

Guest [01:12:02] Yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to overstate and say it was just them or it was. But. But we do have Brigham and Heber claiming to different people that Joseph had a revelation even before 1843. Right. Like. Like Brigham claimed to Augusta Cobb. Brigham claimed. They both claimed to Martha Brotherton. Like that. I have. I've tracked down several sources of people claiming there was a revelation from Joseph. Right. So I do think that they were. Were highly involved. And I don't know. I don't know that they were the original. I can't say that yet. But they were the ones who emerged as the leaders afterwards, so it's the easiest to track theirs earlier.

Meggan Hayes [01:12:38] So for you, Brigham and Heber claiming that there was a revelation from Joseph about polygamy isn't a suggestion that they. That it started with Joseph and that Joseph gave some sort of permission. It's that they were making stuff up and trying to pin their sin and their evil on Joseph as a. As a justification or as permission?

Guest [01:13:07] Yes. I don't think they had enough clout to have their own revelation before you.

Julia [01:13:13] Before I toss this off to you guys for comment, I just think it's interesting that I don't understand why she seems to be. To me, it sounds like she's saying that they were living polygamy, These brethren, in 1842, before and then Joseph got his revelation in 43, Joseph Smith. And like Todd Compton's counting of when Joseph married these women, he had 16 wives before the. At the beginning of 1843. So maybe I can.

Meggan Hayes [01:13:36] Well, she would say Joseph never got the revelation at all. Right.

Bryan Buchanan [01:13:40] This is a Utah era creation.

Meggan Hayes [01:13:42] And she would say that Joseph never had those marriages, just to be fair.

Bryan Buchanan [01:13:46] Okay, there are a couple opinions there. You know, one is that there may have been something that sort of looked like a ceremony between Joseph and women, but that was all that it was. That's. That's one route people have taken, obviously, because William Clayton's diary, as you read through them, we've mentioned the best source for details on Nauvoo era polygamy that directly tie it to Joseph Smith. So if you don't think that Joseph Smith is a polygamist, then you have to do something with Clayton's diaries and Clayton by extension himself, and then also others like that, like she mentioned the key people of Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Willard Richards. If you don't think that Joseph Smith was involved and indeed even fought against it is another option people take. Then you got to do something. And so that's been a common perspective among kind of this latest wave of. Because this is an old idea that polygamy was thrown onto Joseph Smith after the fact. And so this current wave, I think the biggest contribution they've made is this argument that it starts in the British Mission and that's where the Clayton British diary, British Mission years diary comes in.

Kolby Reddish [01:15:10] So, yeah, I have a few thoughts. Firstly, rude to try and blame it on the British Mission Fair. You know, I'm not, not happy about that. But in seriousness, I think there's a few things here. I think about the old section opener to. Or the old section headed to DNC132 that used to say that Joseph Smith had received revelation on this topic as early as what, 1832. It's interesting that 31. It's interesting that now it's changed. So it just says he'd received it earlier. So they're not even trying to put a date on it anymore. I think we covered that change when it happened, but that the response to that from someone like Michelle would be that DC132 wasn't written by Joseph and blah, blah, blah. But at the point you're saying that cantonized scripture is being misattributed. And not only that, but the current church leadership are incorrect or the current church publishing department for the scriptures are incorrect in their section headings and what they add. Then again, I don't know what church she's trying to be a part of. And that's really kind of all I want to sort of say to polygamy denial is that if you're willing to just deny that Joseph Smith did something to the point where the modern church that you're part of is wrong whenever they try and affirm that narrative, then I don't know how you deal with that tension. And then the only other thing is how out of control must Joseph have been considering that we had people who were being told off and rebuked publicly for spiritual wifery at that during Joseph Smith's time?

Bryan Buchanan [01:16:48] How out of control?

Kolby Reddish [01:16:49] Yeah, how out of control was it that Joseph Smith wasn't also rebuking he BC Kimball and Brigham Young and these other people who were also close to him because Bennett was close to him who were running around apparently practicing, pulling me without Joseph say so either they kept it really hidden from him, or he was just completely out of control and wasn't able to rebuke them.

Meggan Hayes [01:17:07] Go ahead, Julia.

Julia [01:17:08] I just, I. This whole thing makes me so frustrated because like you will see in the William Klain journals, he. He takes a polygamous wife. She has a son, they have a kid together. Like, I don't understand. Joseph would have had to been, in my view, the most aloof person to just miss that. All of his close friends, he called William Clayne his best friend. He just like not paying attention to anything that these men are getting away with polygamy. I don't understand this. And then I'm confused by. Because you got. You got John C. Bennett, who's publishing his book in October of 1842. He's listing six wives. Six. Seven wives. And then you have Joseph.

Meggan Hayes [01:17:41] The Joseph had allegedly married.

Julia [01:17:43] The Joseph had married not William Clayton. But then you have Martha Brotherton, who I guess working with John C. Bennett is publishing her story of being approached by Brigham and locked in a room like this is published like seven or eight times in the newspapers. So I'm just. There's just a lot there to like to discredit and say Joseph didn't live.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:01] So the problem is, I don't know what Michelle's argument would be. It'd be pretty hard to argue that Hyrum Smith, Joseph's brother, wasn't practicing polygam me because I think his plural wives moved west as pioneers. And he was proxy before he died as well. Even though he was reluctant, he was against it at first and Then very. Towards the very end, he started. But I do just. Michelle's a friend. I respect her brain a lot and her commitment in her heart. I think her biggest concern is just why these documents are also sketchy. So we'll get into that. But I just wanted her defense. She just feels like there's so much sketchiness and weirdness with these documents. But, but Brian, were you gonna say something quick, Nemo, before we let me.

Kolby Reddish [01:18:47] Yeah, I was just gonna say real quick. I kind of. To that point really, is that I think my. My major problem with. With Michelle's argument or with an argument like this is that it's a. Similar to my, My complaint with apologists is that if you just get to say that anything that is disconfirming to your narrative is either made up or doesn't mean what we think it means. So any document that shows that Joseph was aware of and practicing polygamy is just forged. Right. When he calls Clayton his best friend. Oh, okay. Well, that's just not a real document. If that's the place you're in, or translation doesn't mean translation and all these things, then at that point it's really hard to have a conversation that's grounded in some sort of reality because you just get to say anything means anything. So, yeah, I think what. For me, this conversation has to be grounded in what historians, to the best of their knowledge, are able to say that these documents are real and, and kind of work with that.

Bryan Buchanan [01:19:44] Yeah, and. And that is an interesting question on, you know, the sketchiness idea or the lateness. Yeah. And to that. That has always surprised me because I think, think what would you expect for an illegal practice that is also greatly frowned upon and is abhorrent to the society around you?

Meggan Hayes [01:20:05] It's a scandalous to an existential level.

Bryan Buchanan [01:20:07] Do you expect there to be more stuff like VHS tapes? Yeah, that's. I've always wondered, isn't that kind of exactly what you would expect in a case like this? Codes and hidden things, shorthand and. Yeah, like even references.

Meggan Hayes [01:20:22] Even John C. Bennett, who had every reason to name names, only gave initials. Why did he only give initials?

Bryan Buchanan [01:20:28] So a friend of mine, John Dinger, has written about what are called sexual slander laws and how that plays into it. There are legal and moral and societal reasons for all of these things that to me are quite understandable and if. If not obvious. So yeah, that's the. The nature of. And paucity of the documents is exactly what you would expect. But the thing is, there's not an Absence of them. And like Nemo said, if your practice is everything that you don't like is suddenly questionable or has iffy provenance or whatever, that's not. That's long since ceased to become history.

Meggan Hayes [01:21:07] So not to argue Michelle's side, but Brigham Young and Heber, see, they had the ability to be skinned, you know, to be. To be sketchy characters along with John C. Bennett. I mean, they were all 100 could be deceitful, dishonest, treacherous kind of humans. Right.

Bryan Buchanan [01:21:26] The problem is, is saying, well, yes, they, they were, but not Joseph.

Kolby Reddish [01:21:31] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:21:32] Our pure, lovely Joseph or Hiram, if

Kolby Reddish [01:21:35] he was surrounding himself with those kinds

Bryan Buchanan [01:21:36] of people to talk about. Brigham and Heber are the exact kind of sources that discuss what Joseph Smith was like.

Meggan Hayes [01:21:43] And it also, why is God letting Joseph call scandalmongers or scalawags?

Bryan Buchanan [01:21:49] This is one of the hardest things I have with discussions about this apostles

Meggan Hayes [01:21:53] and his co presidents.

Bryan Buchanan [01:21:55] Problem is, that is not a historical question. And so when that becomes part of your calculus on how to deal with these sources, that is a serious problem because that is now apologetics, which is fine. You can do that. There's nothing wrong with that. Problem is that's not history.

Meggan Hayes [01:22:08] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:22:08] And dragging that into history and pretending like the whole thing is history is. That's. That is a big problem. And that's why there's been, I think, a lot of talking past one another and problems is because we get two different sets of playing roles here. We got apologetics and we have history.

Meggan Hayes [01:22:24] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:22:25] The two are two totally separate things.

Meggan Hayes [01:22:28] Yeah. But I do think Michelle and who Others are raising important questions about lateness of sources, you know, erasing of sources, hiding of sources, you know, and just authenticity of sources. Like, it's good to make sure your documents are authentic. Absolutely. During decades of Mark Hoffman shenanigans.

Bryan Buchanan [01:22:47] Absolutely. The problem is if you're only having those discussions about documents you don't like, that's where the problem occurs.

Meggan Hayes [01:22:54] Okay, let's keep going. This is good.

Julia [01:22:56] Okay, so I have another clip. This is from. This next one's from Karen Hyatt. And I. And I do want to say that I have seen. I watched Michelle's episode. I've seen Karen Hyatt's episode. I really like them as people. Like, I have no problems with them. They seem really like really good people. Also as brains, they're brilliant, very intelligent people. I just disagree on some. Some things. So I think if I knew them in person, I think we would be friends with. I would be friends with both of these women. I just, I just am wanting to bring these disagreements or these historical documents or records to the table and discuss it. But this, but this next clip is from Karen Hyatt.

Clayton as Scribe for the 1843 Polygamy Revelation

Nemo [01:23:30] The whole story that Joseph got this revelation 130, what we now know as 132, all right? It hinges on William Clayton, who was supposedly his scribe at the time, which is, that's even debated. One man, James Whitehead, said that William Clain had been let go, that he was a financial clerk and he'd been let go. But that aside, the story is that William Clayton was in his office and here came Joseph and Hyrum talking about how Emma just won't get on board with polygamy. And Hyrum says, well, just write down the revelation, Joseph, and then I'll take it to Emma and show her and she'll, she'll get on board, you know, because who wouldn't? Being threatened to be destroyed. It's a silly story, but supposedly Joseph says, well, okay. And Hyrum says, use the urim and thummim and get the, and write down the revelation right now. And the urim and thumb had supposedly already been taken away back then. That's another hole in that story. So Joseph says, well, I have it memorized, so I don't even need the urim and thumb. And proceeds to dictate a 10 page revelation by heart to William Clayton, who writes it down. And then Hyrum takes it to Emma and oh dear, it's. She didn't like it. You know, who knew? So the thing is, here's a real key to this. In his 1843 journal entry, William Clayton says on Joseph's behalf, received a revelation today concerning Moses and Abraham and their polygamy. Okay. In a nutshell. And Hiram. And it says Joseph and Hyrum took it to Emma, who said she did not believe a word of it and was very bitter. Okay? So he's got both Joseph and Hyrum taking this revelation to Emma, who didn't like it. Later, decades later, in his 1874 affidavit, William Clayton tells a totally different story. The one I just said about how Hyrum was begging Joseph to write the revelation and Joseph finally does, and Hyrum takes it by himself and Clayton says he and Joseph both stay in the office together and wait. And Hyrum finally comes back and he's been berated by Emma. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. These don't match at all. They're irreconcilable.

Julia [01:25:55] Before I hand that off to you guys, I just think this is interesting because she seems to be like his. My perspective is that Joseph Smith was able to dictate the Book of Mormon. He did it within a short amount of time. As far as what they're saying, I think he had the ability to speak like that and to freely give this 10 page revelation. And also we do have records of Jane Manning saying that Lucy Smith had the Urim and thummim in 1843, which is when this would all be happening. And then this, this last part, I can't remember what she said, but do you guys have any thoughts on this whole thing?

Meggan Hayes [01:26:26] Discrepancy in the accounts?

Julia [01:26:28] Oh yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:26:29] What she was saying.

Julia [01:26:29] Yeah. So sorry. Thank you. So I did compare these two and, and one of the one account saying that the Hyrum went alone and the other one saying that Joseph went, that Joseph stayed in the office with him or that higher man Joseph went. And she says those are irreconcilable. I just think that it's just, he's just recalling it later and he doesn't remember the details. I don't think it's that big of a discrepancy because William wrote down this revelation and it was presented to Emma. That's the main gist of the story. Whether Joseph went with them or not. I don't know that that's a big deal, but I wondered what you guys

Meggan Hayes [01:26:56] thought about that and my quick stab just. Is that it? Well, first of all we'll probably talk about this but I think if I remember from John Turner Clayton writes at some point point all Joseph wants to talk about is polygamy, which is interesting. But if that's true and if Joseph already has 20 plus wives by 1843, he would have had to explain this revelation to so many.

Bryan Buchanan [01:27:20] The gist of it, not just the

Meggan Hayes [01:27:21] women, but also the dads or the husbands or the brothers of all these

Bryan Buchanan [01:27:27] well practiced pitch, you would have explained

Meggan Hayes [01:27:29] it to a lot of people. Dozens and dozens of people. Anyway, I didn't mean to steal your thunder. I just want to get a thought in when I have one if it's worth.

Bryan Buchanan [01:27:37] Well, and that seems to be back to the idea of the Book of Mormon is there's discussions within the family, right. Lucy talks about if this memory is accurate, that Joseph would tell them the most amusing anecdotes about the Nephites and the Lamanites. That's talking about the stories before they're recorded on paper. I think that's a very good comparison here. And yeah, this discrepancy about who went there, that is, to me, is such an odd detail to get hung up on.

Meggan Hayes [01:28:06] 30 years. What, it's a 30 year later account.

Bryan Buchanan [01:28:08] Yeah. The gist of it is not who went, it's that there was a revelation that was recorded on paper. Clayton records it in his journal, The Joseph Smith office journal records it. And then shortly thereafter, Hiram raised it to the High Council. And then later, we have the affidavits in the Expositor, we have people saying there was revelation, it was about polygamy. One of the Austin Coles one quotes language that is from the revelation text we have today. And that's one of. In addition to Clayton's journals, the case of the July 1843 revelation is the other kind of key attack point, because those are, I think, the two biggest. Everyone agrees those are kind of the two biggest points of discussion in this. This whether or not Joseph Smith was a polygamist. And so.

Meggan Hayes [01:28:57] And I want to refer people to that episode. I interviewed rfm and we talked about the Nauvoo High Council minutes that then reappear that are published and then reappear almost verbatim in the Nauvoo Expositor. To me, that. To me, that's a smoking gun.

Bryan Buchanan [01:29:16] Well, the thing I've heard is, well, there was revelation, but it wasn't this revelation we have today. Okay. Everyone in the room agrees that the revelation was about polygamy. To me, that is one of the easiest ways to determine something happened. You have a person who doesn't like a thing that says the thing happened. You have a person that likes and supports the thing that says a thing happened. That tells you, to me, pretty clearly the thing happened. So if it's not this specific revelation text, then what is it? It's clearly a revelation about polygamy. Everyone in the room agrees on that. So that's. This one is a real tough one to try to.

Meggan Hayes [01:29:51] If they're false minutes that get published, how does nobody object or express concern that what was reported to have been said in that Nauvoo High Council meeting wasn't what gets printed. As to what was said were the

Bryan Buchanan [01:30:07] affidavits and the Nauvoo Expositor also created later in Utah? That's the problem is you have all. All of these pieces. Attacking one of them and trying to isolate him is. Is a. Is a common method, but there's all of these things.

Meggan Hayes [01:30:21] Yeah, yeah, it's.

Bryan Buchanan [01:30:22] That's my.

Kolby Reddish [01:30:23] My question would also be, what does the Church have to gain if this Isn't what happened. Surely the church would want to be on Michelle's side, maybe to say, oh,

Bryan Buchanan [01:30:34] yeah, never did this. This is all made up.

Meggan Hayes [01:30:38] Yeah, well, I mean, by. By admitting that Joseph never practiced it, they're condemning all the prophets between Brigham Young and freaking down the jokes, really.

Bryan Buchanan [01:30:50] And some people are fairly explicit about that. You know, if it's not. It's, you know, out of order, it.

Julia [01:30:56] It.

Bryan Buchanan [01:30:56] It starts to sound very much like fundamentalist language. It's, you know, up to a certain point, it's okay, but then it veers off the rails. Right. Which, you know, that's fine. But again, that's not a historical question. That's an apologetic question. You know, up to what point is this person divinely acknowledged and supported? Right. That's not a question of history. That's an entirely different thing.

Meggan Hayes [01:31:19] Okay, Julia.

Julia [01:31:21] Okay, so I was just. I was going to progress forward. So what I have next are little biographies of some of these main characters that we're talking about when we unfold this history of the William Clayton journals. Brian, do we want to talk about those characters now or do you want to. Do you want to talk about them as we go through the timeline? How. How do you want to.

Key Characters in the Clayton Journals Story

Bryan Buchanan [01:31:36] Sure, yeah. So this is sort of like you're reading War and Peace. Here's like, the list of. Of main characters in your. Your. Your story, because there are a lot of moving parts, and we'll do our best to keep them in order because to me, there, I mean, we're kind of doing this today. Like, there has always been so much attention on the Joseph Smith era, which is fascinating, obviously, but I love 20th century history and this period of kind of Leonard Arrington forward up through the 90s, endlessly interesting to me. So I think it's important that people understand, like, just like in Nauvoo, we're talking about how, you know, Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon bought heads and Clayton's mad at this guy and, you know, all these personality dynamics, same kinds of things are happening in our time. And it's fun because we know these people and it's. I think it's fascinating to see the behind the scenes.

Julia [01:32:24] Okay, perfect. So we're going to go through this list of characters, and the first one is James Allen, which we have talked about a little bit already, but he was an American historian of Mormonism and was an assistant church historian for the church from 1972 to 1979. While working as assistant church historian, he co authored the Story of the Latter Day Saints with Glenn Leonard. After Ezra Taft Benson dismissed the book as secular, Secular New History. Other events led to the dissolution of the LDS Church History Department in 1982. And maybe you can speak more about that. I just thought that was really interesting. Alan resigned as assistant church historian in 1979 and returned to work at BYU full time. And he passed away in 2024. And this picture really here you shared, Brian. It's really fascinating. We have Jim on the left, and then in the middle you have Leonard Arrington. And on the right you have Davis Bitten. And I don't know if you have anything else to add to this.

Bryan Buchanan [01:33:15] It's just fun to kind of see them as like the bishopric of the Historical department. And it's so interesting to see how the Bensons and Packers and Petersons really started to view them as threats. And these guys, when the department is organized, Leonard calls them in, they have prayer to kind of begin their work. Like, these were faithful guys. Their perspective was that accurate history is an expression of faith. They truly believed that Mormonism was true. And so they thought telling the story accurately is the best course of action. And again, like we talked about, that pendulum on that goes back and forth over the next couple decades.

Julia [01:34:05] Yeah. Okay, so the next one is Tom Alexander, Nemo. Would you be able to read this, his biography?

Kolby Reddish [01:34:11] Sure. Thomas Alexander is an American historian and academic who is a professor emeritus at byu. He studied at Weber State University and Utah State University and received a Ph.D. from the University of California in Berkeley in 1965. He taught at BYU from 1964 until 2004.

Julia [01:34:32] Thank you. Did you have anything to add, Brian, on this?

Bryan Buchanan [01:34:35] So, yes, you have the guys like the Leonard and Jim and Davis internally. But then you have guys like Tom who are scattered around. Like, you know, you'll have guys at byu, a couple guys at the Utah State, other places, not in church employee, but who are kind of have a similar vision on how Mormon history should be researched and written. So they're all part of this, this really important generation of historians.

Julia [01:35:01] Perfect. Okay, so next is George Homer Durham. Durham. Homer Durham was an academic administer and was a general authority of the LDS Church from 1977 until his death. Durham earned a BA in political science and History from the University of Utah. He also earned a PhD in political science from the University of California and became a professor at the University of Utah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:35:26] Homer's really interesting. I mean, he was a university. He was the president of Arizona State University. He'd written things. He was the kind of guy that on the surface seemed like would be more of a champion of academic history within the purview of the historical department. And I think they. Leonard and company kind of had their fingers crossed at the beginning. But it became clear that his marching orders were to ride herd on these guys and rein them in. And so that relationship became tough. And in fact, I'm trying to think at what point this was. But they had sort of like a portrait gallery of the church historians. There's no Leonard there.

Meggan Hayes [01:36:11] So he was called in general conference, but released quietly. Not.

Bryan Buchanan [01:36:16] Yeah, it was sort of a release by degrees. Right. And. And transferred down to byu. All these pieces kind of happen.

Meggan Hayes [01:36:22] It was quite over a period of

Bryan Buchanan [01:36:23] time and it was very confusing to people. If you don't give people a clear reason why something happens, then people will invent reasons. And so people kind of started to wonder, had Leonard done something wrong? And so there's these rumors that start to float around. And this was intensely painful to Leonard, who had believed that he had this role to play and believed that this was the best course of action. And to see that be shut down was very difficult. And it was very chilling to sort of that up and coming generation of people interested. And Mike Quinn tells this story of when he's a professor at byu. He has a student come in and say, you know, Mike, I love your classes, but I'm going to change my major because I, you know, I. I don't see a bright future here. And that. That tore at Mike's heart because he could see the fallout of this. Was the message that was not so quietly being sent is that candid academic history is not really welcome. Definitely not internally, and we're not even real crazy about it elsewhere. So that's this period that this story we're about to tell happens in this transitional, kind of confusing period for both those inside the story and definitely those on the outside watching.

Julia [01:37:52] Yeah, perfect. Nemo. Will you actually talk about Andy Ehat?

Kolby Reddish [01:37:57] Yep. Absolutely. Andrew F. Ehat earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from byu, served in the US Air Force, and earned a Master's of Arts in American History from byu. He has done extensive research on the life of Joseph Smith, specializing in the Nauvoo period.

Bryan Buchanan [01:38:19] So he usually goes by Andy. Super interesting guy. I read the stories of these guys, these younger guys. They. I think it's Scott Follering told the story. They would go do research and then they would go down the street to a nearby chapel and play basketball and then maybe come back and do some more research. These are definitely guys I could get along with. And so during the 70s, Andy is Truman Madsen's research assistant. And so you have these guys who are younger who are super interested in Mormon history, especially some of the rabbit holes, and they have assignments from their professors that, you know, go research this fun topic. And on the side, they're getting interested in their own things, and they're kind of trading documents. And there's this, again, this. This optimism of the Arrington years. And so this generation is really excited about Mormon history and Mormon documents and these sources that they're discovering. And, you know, they're finding stuff in special collections at byu, and then they're discovering, oh, there's this great stuff in the historical department. And because the policy right now is more open access, once I've established that I'm a researcher, I can go in and I can see this killer stuff. And so there's this really, this bubbling up of enthusiasm in this generation, particularly these younger guys that are starting to work on a Master's and a PhD and they're starting to write articles. And Andy is right in the middle of all this. This. This wave of enthusiasm that's going on.

Julia [01:39:57] Perfect. Okay, so this next one we've heard a little bit about already, but Dean C. Jesse. Dean Jesse was an historian, an. A historian in the LDS church, archivist, editor, and an authority on early Mormon handwriting, which I thought was very interesting. He graduated from BYU with a master's of arts in the LDS history. He also taught LDS seminary for four years. He was hired as a church archivist under Joseph fielding Smith in 1964, and he passed away in last year, in December of 2025.

Bryan Buchanan [01:40:26] Dean was a really interesting guy of these. He had the longest kind of institutional experience and memory. I should have brought a copy with me. There's this great book called Conversations with Mormon Historians where younger historians would interview this older generation about their experiences. And it's fascinating because Dean is sort of that holdover from the old period of these guys who really didn't have any background in library science or things. Like, they just got a job there and sort of learned on the job. And so over the years, Dean got really interested in Joseph Smith particularly, and was fat, was very, very good with documents. And like you pointed out there, handwriting and identifying whose handwriting this was. This will be a problem during the Hoffman years because Dean, like everyone else on earth, Hoffman got him. So Dean is the one who will develop what becomes the Joseph Smith papers. And his sort of beginning in Mormon history is he writes a dissertation on fundamentalist Mormons because he had his grandma's brother. I think was. Had been involved in early, early, like proto fundamentalist stuff. And his, his might have been his thesis, but it gets on the radar of church leaders and eventually it has to go to Joseph Fielding Smith for clearance. And so Dean was used to the idea of things aren't always quite as neat and clean as they appear. And so he was outside of Leonard, Jim and Dean as historian and assistants. Dean was kind of like the senior researcher and historian there. So he's a very important and trusted and you know, everyone would frequently go to him with questions. So he's a very central figure at the historical department.

Julia [01:42:29] Okay, so our next one is Scott H. Following Nima. Would you, would you read this one?

Kolby Reddish [01:42:34] Yep. Scott Fohring was an American historian and document editor for the LDS Church. He joined the church while in the Air Force. He received his bachelor's degree in history from byu. He received an MPA from Troy State University and returned to BYU as an instructor with the Air Force rotc. There he became a research historian for the church. After he retired from the Air Force, he passed away in 2018.

Bryan Buchanan [01:43:01] Scott's an interesting guy. He's kind of like Andy Ehat, same sort of relative age, same kind of thing. Like these younger guys that are getting interested in all this stuff and starting to write and research and trading stuff later on. Scott will be one of the historians on the Oliver Cowdery documentary history that we're still hoping to see. That's kind of another one of those long term projects that we'd love to see come out. But yeah, these guys who just are endlessly fascinated with documents and primary sources and are interested in poking into the rabbit holes occasionally.

Nemo [01:43:40] Yeah.

Julia [01:43:41] Okay, so this is the last one of these key characters. This is Donald T. Schmidt. Schmidt was a veteran of World War II and served in the army as an officer in military government in the European theater. He received his BA and MA from the University of Iowa and a master's of Legal studies from the University of Denver. He was the director of library archives for the church from 1972 to 1984. He's also served as a temple sealer and a patriarch.

Bryan Buchanan [01:44:10] So when they decide to professionalize the historical department, one of the things they do is they split it up into a couple divisions. They kind of move them around a little bit. But like I mentioned earlier, Arrington always gets credit for this open access policy. And while he was certainly a champion of it and kind of facilitated things, he didn't control Access. That's Don's department. And so these discussions of copyright and possession and all of these things, these come under more Don. And in the court case that we talked about, he will actually be deposed and then called as a witness because he is one of the key figures that's giving authorization to researchers for things. So that's his role in all of this.

Julia [01:44:53] Okay, perfect. Okay, so now we're going to launch into this timeline of these William Clayton.

Timeline of Journal Publication Efforts

Meggan Hayes [01:44:58] I would say that's quite a cast of characters.

Julia [01:45:01] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [01:45:02] For a story. This better be a good story.

Bryan Buchanan [01:45:05] It is interesting because you have these different generations, Right. You've got these younger guys who want to see everything, and the older guys who are in charge of access, who may be a little more conservative by temperament and who are. Are being kind of told to over time to tamp things down so you can see age differences and different viewpoints on access start to run into each other.

Julia [01:45:30] Okay, so the first part of Our timeline is 1974. Jim Allen and Tom Alexander, which we talked about, published Manchester Mormons, the Journal of William Clayton, 1840-1842. So this is just the earlier stuff I'm noticing.

Bryan Buchanan [01:45:43] Yep. So this is where Clayton's diaries kind of start to get to the public. The family had published the trail diaries back in the 20s, and then they'd been reprinted. But this was the kind of the first modern publication of some Clayton diaries. So what happened is this particular diary had been in family hands. It was then donated to byu and Jim learned of it and decided this is a great source. We need to get this out. And this is while he is assistant church historian and then also teaching at BYU halftime. So he pulls in Tom to help him, and they go through and do a really nice job of. Here's a good clean transcription with footnotes and everything. Who are these people? And it was going to be the first of a series. Unfortunately, the series dies already 1974. There are misgivings about this kind of history that Arrington and that generation wanted to publish. So that's where. That's where our Clayton publication story starts.

Julia [01:46:41] Okay. And then this next bit is. This is 79. So this is. This is five years or so later from 74, right?

Bryan Buchanan [01:46:48] Yep.

Julia [01:46:49] Okay. And then you have Jim Allen was authorized by the First Presidency to see the Clayton diaries for about three weeks. And then we'll talk about this memo, too. There was a memo from the First Presidency to Homer Durham, the General Authority advisor. And then Jim is working on the Clayton biography and will be giving a presentation on Clayton at Graceline College in March of this year. And Dean is working on a study of Joseph Smith.

Bryan Buchanan [01:47:12] So this is it. This is where our story really starts to speed up here. So after publishing those earlier diaries, Jim realized Clayton is fascinating. So he kind of keeps poking at it. He's collecting things, and he realizes that if he wants to do anything serious, he's got to see the Nauvoo Diaries, because, again, at this point, nothing of those has been published. The physical diaries are in the First Presidency vault, not at the historical department. And so he's got to go through the channels to get them there. And so he asked. And what's interesting is it's him. And as we'll learn, what happens is they get there, and Jim has his research interest, Dean Jesse has his research interests, and they realize it's stupid to duplicate. And so what they ended up doing is Jim would take a volume, Dean would take a volume, and they kind of collaborated and mushed it all together into the typescript. But again, this is a very formal process. Like, this has to go up the channel, and then it has to come back down the channel to say yes. And when we did our episodes on this, Lindsey compared it to Jurassic park. When they're transferring the Raptor at the beginning of the movie and the smoke comes up and the door opens and, like, this is. This is a big deal. And again, like I pointed out, this is sort of the tail end of the glory years running into the cooling period. And so it is interesting. I would love to know what the discussion looked like about granting them access.

Meggan Hayes [01:48:39] So late 70s, 80, around then.

Bryan Buchanan [01:48:41] 79.

Meggan Hayes [01:48:42] Okay. Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:48:42] Yep.

Julia [01:48:43] Should we go ahead and read the memo?

Bryan Buchanan [01:48:45] Yeah. So this memo is fascinating. So this was a trial exhibit in the court case that we mentioned that we'll talk about here in a minute.

Julia [01:48:51] Oh, dang, Nemo. Do you actually. Would you actually mind reading this?

Nemo [01:48:54] Yep.

Kolby Reddish [01:48:55] Dear Elder Durham, I have been asked to inform.

Meggan Hayes [01:48:58] Do the date.

Kolby Reddish [01:48:58] Sorry. January 3, 1979. Dear Elder Durham, I have been asked to inform you that the Brethren have approved your request that brother James B. Allen be permitted to review the journals of Elder William Clayton covering the period of 1841 to 1845 in connection with a manuscript on the life of William Clayton which he is preparing. The diaries are handed to you herewith. It is understood that according to your letter, they will be returned to the office of the First Presidency in a month.

Bryan Buchanan [01:49:29] So if you're reading that and thinking, is he a lawyer? Yes, he was. Frank Gibbons was a lawyer. So he had been the secretary to the First Presidency and was a very much a champion and kind of defender of them. So he, I think, was very cautious. He was very interested in protecting the. The reputation of the First Presidency. So the fact that they grant authorization is really interesting. Again, if you have to go back in time to 1979, there is essentially nothing out there on the life of William Clayton. You have that trail diary. People know he wrote Come, come ye Saints. That's about it. There's no way that the first presidency are reading the Clayton diaries firsthand. And so this is one of those cases where I don't think they anticipated how controversial this was going to become because of the content of these diaries. It's a diary of Nauvoo. You know, this is. Is a happy. This on the banks of the river there. Sure, yeah. Give them access. Why not? So that's.

Julia [01:50:41] They.

Bryan Buchanan [01:50:42] They're. They're physically transferred to the Historical Department. They would use them during the day. At the end of the night, they'd go put them in the vault in the Historical Department. So, different building, until they were done with them, at which point they then go back to the First Presidency vault.

Julia [01:50:56] Okay, and so this next one we have is. Is the Leonard Arrington journal. Do you want to set this up at all, Brian?

Bryan Buchanan [01:51:02] Yeah, so this is fun because obviously Jim is his assistant church historian. He's worked with Dean, but, you know, they're kind of. They're working on their own projects. And so it's not like Leonard is. They're not like, sitting next to each other. And so Leonard would, you know, they chat during the day, but they're all kind of working on their own things. And so it's. That's. Leonard Arrington's journals are absolutely fantastic. Our good friend Gary Bergera published those with signature books. They are an unbelievably detailed look at how the Historical Department worked in those years. And so Leonard was really, really good about documenting what went on.

Julia [01:51:46] For example, okay, so this one, this is dated January 23, 1979, so 20 days after the other memo was released. So in his own diary, he recorded Leonard Arrington records. Jim Allen and Dean. Jesse came in to mention that there are a number of things in the William Clayton Nauvoo diary which they are now reading, which pertain to dealings with Emma Smith. They said there is not only a good deal of reference to her and her attitudes, but that which is found there will tend to strengthen our own position with respect to Emma, that we attempt to treat her Fairly and she refused to allow us to do so, but instead on having her own way in everything, which is which he underlined. They asked whether this information should not be shared with Richard Anderson, who is editing the Joseph and Emma letters, and with Valine Avery and Linda Newell, who are writing the biography of Emma. And this is, remind me the title of this one, Mormon Enigma. There you go.

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:47] Yep.

Julia [01:52:48] And then he continues. I am going to bring this up with Brother Durham on Thursday, if possible, to get his reaction. If not able to do so, I'll bring it up next Tuesday when we have our meeting.

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:59] So this is really interesting. So that's Leonard. This would. His office was story hour. So people would come in, his staff members and tell him cool stuff. Hey, look at this cool thing we found. Or people would come in with stuff to donate or they would start telling stories about John Widsel. And so Leonard is hearing kind of the pulse of Mormon history. And so understandably, as Jim and Dean actually get to read the journal, they start reading this and are undoubtedly blown away because this is details about Nauvoo that are not only not out there, they're not available other places. Really. Clayton's journal is singularly important for understanding, especially the behind the scenes novel.

Meggan Hayes [01:53:45] Was that letter just basically alerting them to the fact that Emma was a problem, that she was unreasonable, that she was hard to work with, and they wanted evidence to buttress that position.

Bryan Buchanan [01:53:58] Well, so remember Dean's part of. Sorry, not Dean, Richard Anderson. His interest is the letters between Joseph and Em and that relationship. So that's where he comes in is because they're seeing this dynamic. And remember that pre Mormon enigma, LDS attitudes toward Emma are very negative still. Yes. This is that Brigham perspective of her has held on strong. And so from Clayton's journal, they're seeing. Oh, and in fairness to Emma, if you read Clayton's journal, it's a lot more complicated than that. But definitely you can see the disagreements that happen. Emma and Brigham and eventually Emma and Clayton, which is very painful to Clayton. But once that split happens, you know, he's kind of, he's not. No one was ever as strident as Brigham, but he's, he's kind of mad at her. So they're seeing those dynamics. And because Richard Anderson is working on Joseph and Emma, they're like, oh, well, Richard could see it. They're like, oh yeah, Linda and Val, who are writing a biography of Emma should also get to see it. Do you want to guess of Richard if I tell you that one party got to see him. And one didn't. Guess who did.

Guest [01:55:13] The dude.

Bryan Buchanan [01:55:13] Yeah. Richard gets to see them. Linda and Val do not. So they. Again, this goes all the way back to, like a Fawn Brody, a Juanita Brooks, a Dale Morgan, who are denied a key, key piece. Historians, good historians, like to do their homework, like to cover their bases. And so you do the best you can with the sources that you have. If you are denied access, you're denied access. You do the best with the other stuff that you have. So as great as Mormon Enigma was, imagine if she had also been allowed to see the Clayton Dyer, the two of them had been allowed to see them. That would have just made it an even better book with more nuance and, and context to things.

Julia [01:55:57] So, yeah. Okay, so this next part you've already mentioned already, where Jim and Dean split up the work and create a complete typescript of the Nauvoo journals. And you have 1842. There's 46. And you mean pages. This is the year 1842.

Bryan Buchanan [01:56:13] If you're paying close attention, you notice that the memo from Frank Gibbons got the years wrong. He's here off on both ends. And when they're done, yeah, that transcript is in the neighborhood of 300 to 350 pages. So that's not like huge. But remember, that's over the space of a couple weeks. That's. That's fast work, even for two people. Clayton's handwriting is pretty good, which helped their cause. But if, and this is going to be part of our discussion later, if anyone has not done a lengthy transcription of something from an original source, in their case, like, you can't put a scan and a word doc. Right. You got to have it propped up. And then either a typewriter or longhand, there's a typewritten. Actually, we know the answer to that. That is a long, laborious process. And there's no automatic typewriter yet. We have no electronic typewriters yet.

Meggan Hayes [01:57:07] No word processing.

Bryan Buchanan [01:57:08] You got an Underwood that you're just pounding away at. Right? So, yeah, that's. That's pretty impressive. They get that done. And I have to think it probably was not super difficult for them to motivate themselves to go to work today. You know, they're like, you know, their colleagues like, oh, hey, what do you look at the William Clayton journals and whatever. That's just Historian Christmas right there.

Meggan Hayes [01:57:34] It would have been.

Bryan Buchanan [01:57:35] Now, in fairness, as we've now been able to see the full typescript, people are like, well, this is boring. No, it's a normal Journal. Normal journals mean you gotta wade through office stuff and tax records and land deeds to get to Clayton's teenage plural wife, speaking to Willard Richards dead wife and holding a conversation. Like you read a journal hoping for fun stuff, and Clayton's journal is full of it.

Meggan Hayes [01:58:01] Or the threesomes.

Bryan Buchanan [01:58:02] Or threesomes. This is not a hard journal to motivate yourself to work on for sure.

Andy Ehat's Access and the Typescript Controversy

Julia [01:58:10] Okay, so the next part of our timeline is again, this is still January of 1979. Andy Ehat was authorized to see originals read through. He reads through them, makes lists of interesting entries, then shortly thereafter types about 75 pages of excerpts from Dean Jesse's complete typescript. Jim later provides another 12 pages regarding Joseph Smith's sermons in the diaries.

Bryan Buchanan [01:58:34] So what Andy has been doing is a main project, which is his master's thesis at byu. This looks at sort of interlocking pieces of polygamy and the introduction of temple rites and succession questions and looking at who's kind of in which inner circles and how. Like, he actually has a physical Venn diagram that goes along with it. This was, this was something. And then kind of a spinoff project was he and a BYU professor named Lyndon Cook were working on a book called the Words of Joseph Smith that would include all known accounts of Joseph Smith's Nauvoo era sermons. In some cases, that's one of one paragraph. Other times you might have five reports of a sermon of a couple pages apiece. And this timeline is a little murky, but it seems like originally Andy, during that same time frame, looked through the journals very quickly and was like, okay, I want a June 30, 1843 is fun. And then February 2, 1844, because he's, you know, he's. He's a. He's a grad student, right? He's not an employee. He's not a senior person. So. And what you see is this dynamic of nobody wants to ask a lot of questions because you don't want to get anyone in trouble. You don't want to accidentally alert people who might shut down things. And you don't want to get denied. And so Andy, at trial, the judge will ask Andy, why didn't you just make a Xerox copy of the whole thing? And the answer is not wholly satisfying. So what Andy does is he. He apparently goes to Dean Jesse after. So, so Jim and Dean together collaborate on this complete typescript, and then they each have a copy. And then Andy goes to Dean and persuades him to let him type out some excerpts for his thesis. And then after that, he goes to Jim and says, you know, for this words of Joseph Smith project, could you give me these sermon reports in Clayton's diary, Joseph Smith speaking for these dates. And then he puts those all together, just about 90 pages. So if you do the math, we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of not quite half of it. And then that's what he has to work with going forward.

Julia [02:01:07] Okay, and then you'll have to explain what these are. Are these part of the. What was presented during trial?

Bryan Buchanan [02:01:13] So, yes. So in the later court case that we'll get to here in just a minute, as part of the process, Andy is given written questions relating to key questions in the trial and then gives written response. And so in here, he documents what he did and what his level of access was and how he created those excerpts that we just talked about. So that's the fun of this discussion, is largely thanks to the trial. We get really good documentation of all of the complexity going around and the nuts and bolts of who had access win and how did the. You know, on the chain of custody of all this stuff.

Meggan Hayes [02:01:54] Are you saying in lawsuits with the church, there's a discovery process where you can ask for documents that show.

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:03] You can ask.

Meggan Hayes [02:02:04] Intimate insider conversations.

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:05] You can certainly ask. And get quashed.

Meggan Hayes [02:02:08] Sure. Oh, get quashed.

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:11] Not to spoil the story too much, but the discovery requests were the original diaries, the typescript, and we also want to question Boyd Packer and Spencer Kimball. None of those things happened. Quash, quash, quash, quash.

Meggan Hayes [02:02:27] Noted.

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:28] McConkey.

Meggan Hayes [02:02:29] Noted, noted.

Julia [02:02:34] And, Brian, there's value in reading these, do you think?

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:37] Yeah, so he says at the bottom there. So in. In doing research in early LDS history in 1979, we give a.

Meggan Hayes [02:02:43] In the context of the lawsuit.

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:44] Not yet.

Meggan Hayes [02:02:46] Do we want to do that before we read this or not? Or. Or not?

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:49] Not necessarily. We'll talk about the trail here.

Meggan Hayes [02:02:50] Just go ahead.

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:51] Yeah, so this is helpful just because he'll. He'll in his own words, say, so plaintiff, meaning Andy Ehat, approached Don Schmitz. Remember, we talked. He's the guy in charge of access. And inquired about some entries in William Clayton's journal in which he was interested. He ultimately received permission to read all three. We flip of the journals noted above. While reading, he made notes of the dates of the journal entries in which he was primarily concerned. In 1979 and 1980, he was given permission to type out from a complete reproduction a typescript. So that's the one that Jim and Dean had made of those three diaries, the extracts that he had earlier noted sometime later. Lyndon Cook. So that's the BYU professor he's working with. And plaintiff conceived collaborating on what became the book Words of Joseph Smith, and at that time obtained permission to submit to James Allen the dates of the Nauvoo discourses which he knew William Clayton had reported on and which plaintiff had not previously transcribed. Among his notes, Dr. Allen typed from his own notes and furnished to the plaintiff a typescript of those discourses recorded by Clayton. After receiving the quotations from Dr. Allen, plaintiff interleaved them with his own typescript, and they now appear in defendant's documents. So that's the attached exhibits as part of the trial. So there's the process. So you can. You can see that it's, It's. It's tricky, right? People have to kind of maneuver within the perceived access that they have. Again, why didn't Andy just. You know, that's a lot of work to type 75 pages when even in 1979, you got a Xerox machine right there, boom, 10 minutes even, then you're done. And again like that, the judge will point blank ask, why didn't you? Well, I didn't quite feel that it was my place. Like there's all these gentlemen's understandings and, you know, unwritten order of things within the historical department about what's proper conduct and what you can do. So it's. It's kind of murky and no one wants to ask too many questions. Again, remember, this is a transition period where the archives are beginning to get squished. And so it's. It. You know, if this discussion happens in 1973, this probably plays out very differently. Mike Quinn tells these great stories about how he's at this table reading the Heber J. Grant journals, which just barely became available. And next to him is this guy, Henry Wolfinger, a non Mormon who would go out on his breaks and smoke and then come back in. And he's reading First Presidency minutes right next to him. No one says, boo.

Julia [02:05:31] Wait, this reminds me.

Meggan Hayes [02:05:32] You and Lindsey, early in the Arrington administration, slowly. Okay? More lenient early.

Julia [02:05:38] Okay, Yeah, I know it's a different time period, but in your episode with Lindsay, you guys talked about. I don't remember where this story fits in, but Donny Osmond coming into the archives.

Bryan Buchanan [02:05:46] So when we go down to BYU to. To dig through Richard Anderson's papers, you know, we're having a great time. It's fascinating because Richard is in this era of, you know, if you want a dialogue article, you either have to have the issue or you got to have a photocopy of it. Right. So there's photocopies of everything and typescripts of stuff and Richard's crappy handwriting of fascinating topics. Faith crisis letters, emails. Later, between early Joseph Smith papers, people. So we're having a great time, and friends are there, and we're talking to them, and all of a sudden, behind us, we hear this kerfuffle, and we look over and through the glass and kind of their office, there's Donny Osmond. So I don't know if sources can be described as Technicolor, but they were because he would use colored paper. So it's. If you haven't experienced the joy of digging through crap in archives, it's a lot of fun. Nerd fun is fantastic.

Meggan Hayes [02:06:56] When I was at Utah State, I just went and rifled through the Arrington Papers just because there was such a kerfuffle about whether or not they got to stay there and that sort of thing.

Bryan Buchanan [02:07:05] The Clayton diary saga and the Arrington Papers saga are, I think, our two best modern case studies of access and ownership and. And stuff like that. Yeah, that's one. It's harder because we don't. We don't have a trial. I don't have depositions. I don't have trial transcripts. I don't have all these things relating to the Arrington Papers. I'd love to. Yeah, I think that's fascinating, too.

Meggan Hayes [02:07:30] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:07:31] And. And again, this comes up actually directly. Leonard is. I'm trying to think if this is. He is called as a witness in the trial, either in the trial or at some point in the 80s, this idea of, what would you do if you had a typescript like this that was created while you were an employee? Leonard says, I wouldn't have taken it with me. Which is interesting because he did. And that was largely what the argument was over is this stuff that the church considered work product and Leonard thought was his.

Meggan Hayes [02:08:10] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:08:11] So.

Kolby Reddish [02:08:12] Yeah.

Julia [02:08:13] Okay. So next you have these. These are typescripts. And then you've labeled them here.

Bryan Buchanan [02:08:18] Yep. So this is a photocopy of a page of Andy's excerpts. So this is what he did when he's typing up these 75 pages. This is what they look like. So you can see here he will. In. In slashes, he'll. He'll show things that were inserted, and then he's writing some notes in the margins, and they're kind of out of order. Right. And part of that is because the journals are wonky. This is an interesting one. This has been raised as another red flag about the journals because. So you remember that picture we had, there were three physical books. The first book, he starts writing chronologically and then quits in that book, moves to the second book, fills it all up and then comes back to the first one and completes that one and then goes on. And the third one, sort of chronological. This could not be less unusual for the 19th century. Finding a particular entry in the Brigham Young journals is a nightmare. He'll write for two weeks here and then he jumps here and then he comes back to this one and skips 20 pages and writes upside down for three weeks. And, you know, this kind of thing, so many of them did this. This is why, I don't know. Rob Jensen actually, in the MHA presentation, makes a good case that William might have either lent it or lost it for a while and then discovered it. I don't know. These guys did not enjoy. Always a linear journal and it drives you crazy trying to find stuff. So. But that's what Andy's notes looks like. So he. And you read through and you can totally see why he chose that entry because, boy, it's interesting.

Nemo [02:10:00] And.

Bryan Buchanan [02:10:00] But in some cases, you know, he's grabbing just one sentence and you can see ellipses. And so, you know, there's more. Or he'll do a paragraph and then ellipses and then another paragraph. And you know, of course, all along the question is, well, what's that ellipsis right there? Is that. What is that? Yeah, that's what his notes from the. The journals look like. And then these are the sermon reports in the Clayton journals that Jim Allen provided. So like others, like a Wilford Woodruff, like a George Lobb, like a William McIntyre, there were these people who would go listen to Joseph Smith preach and hour, two hours, and then, you know, at the time on writing on their leg or afterwards, you know, that night, they would record whatever they remembered. And so as obviously as they're preparing this book on all the known sermon reports, Clayton's got a bunch of them. And so Jim Allen provides those to him. And as you can see, they look different, right? They've got different typewriters and that will become very much part of the story down the road.

Julia [02:11:02] And then next you have Richard L. Anderson. Are these his own notes?

Bryan Buchanan [02:11:06] Yes, that's what Richard's looked like. And thankfully he typed these because Richard's handwriting was.

Julia [02:11:14] Well, he is writing in the margins. You can see there's a bunch of notes.

Bryan Buchanan [02:11:17] And so you look at him. In fact, go to the next one. It's a little bit bigger. So if you see at the top right there, you know, he'll do like W.C. william Clayton. And he did, you know, 12 pages, whatever.

Meggan Hayes [02:11:30] And then he.

Bryan Buchanan [02:11:31] He started what he called the new series. And so, like I said, Lindsay and I are looking through, and here in this folder is one page, and then here's another one. And we're just photographing as fast as we can go because we have 200 boxes to deal with.

Julia [02:11:45] Oh, my gosh.

Bryan Buchanan [02:11:46] And so then we get home only to discover that sometimes Richard made six photocopies of the same page and kind of put them in different subject files. But so that's. That's what Richard did. And, you know, obviously his main interest is Emma, but it's pretty clear he's like, well, I got him here. That looks interesting to him. You know, maybe that will be something I do in the future. And Richard was fascinating because he was so detailed. At Benchmark, we bought some of his library, and when he read things, he read them. So his copy of Women in Authority, the Michael Quinn chapter. His former Richard had been his campus bishop back at byu, and they'd maintained some contact through the years. He marked the hell out of that chapter. So it was. It was just really interesting to see Richard and his research process.

Kolby Reddish [02:12:45] So that sounds like he was just kind of grabbing what he could get. Right? And that seems to be very much a theme of what's going on here currently with people trying to get hold of stuff, is that the church gives them a limited window to see things, or they end up with a limited window to see what they can. So they just grab whatever they can.

Bryan Buchanan [02:13:02] Yep. I know this is interesting now. I think this might be interesting down the road or helpful, and I'm just gonna grab this.

Julia [02:13:08] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:13:09] So these guys, you know, this is the era of file cabinets chock full of folders of stuff. And some people were super organized, and other guys were not at all. And it's just this. This, you know, hodgepodge of random crap that sometimes had fascinating things in it. So that was interesting to see because, you know, along the lines, we knew that Jim and Dean had. Had done this. And later on, we kind of learned that Michael Quinn had also been involved, but Richard Anderson had been totally left out of the picture. And so it was so fun when Lindsay and I went down there to come back and realize these are Clayton journal entries that we've never seen before. And you know, outside of people who worked internally on the project over the years, no one else has seen them. So that was, that was very fun.

Julia [02:13:58] Okay, so next we have this letter from Elder Durham to Rich or I guess, yeah, to Elder Durham from Richard L. Anderson.

Bryan Buchanan [02:14:04] Yeah, so this is so fun. I was thinking we had the, I had the authorization to Richard, but I don't. But this is so fun. So you can see he's very grateful to Homer for greasing the wheels and making this happen. So it seems like Richard kind of, you know, they, they tipped Richard off that hey, they let us see the Clayton journals. And Richard's interest is immediately piqued. And so he asks for permission and it's kind of hard to give those two and not Richard. So over a course of a couple weeks, he pounded out not, certainly not as much as, you know, not anything complete and definitely not as much as Andy, but still a healthy amount.

Meggan Hayes [02:14:44] So do we need to read that letter?

Bryan Buchanan [02:14:46] I just basically thanking him for his, for his help. Yeah, so. And he says, you know, I was able to finish them completely. So he got out of them what he wanted and can now write with greater knowledge and less guesswork. Except he didn't. But after that's Lindsay and I realized, after the fact, we realized why he didn't publish a lot because he read and annotated everything and wrote a billion letters and had no time to finish things. So.

Julia [02:15:12] Yeah, and so, so next you have in the summer of 1981, and I have this book and I think it's fascinating. Yeah, he had. Gives a copy of these excerpts to Lyndon Cook. They were co. Write, co authoring words of Joseph Smith. Cook keeps them in his campus office at byu. And also one thing I want to point out too, just really fast is I think looking at these, specifically these sermons of Joseph Smith, you'll find that he really didn't preach from the Book of Mormon. And I think that's fascinating.

Bryan Buchanan [02:15:36] But yeah, if Joseph is talking, is quoting a scripture, it's almost certainly New Testament. Lot of Paul. And if it's not New Testament, maybe some Old Testament allusions. Not a lot of Book of Mormon doctrine. Covenants, revelations, not really there. Yeah, that is a very interesting dynamic. So this is where the mystery begins. So they're working on this project. So Lyndon or Andy photocopies his excerpts and gives them to Lyndon, who is a BYU professor. He puts them in his filing cabinet down at byu. I of course did not go there, but have heard talk every inch of campus space gets used Right. You can't have that many chapels on campus because there would be nothing but chapels. So you'll have sacrament meeting in a class auditorium. And so bishops offices are faculty offices also. So what happens is this guy, they. They down the road discovered this guy who had been in a campus bishopric, who used Lyndon's office, got a little handsy with his file cabinets. So in the. The seventies press story that we'll talk about here in just a second, they interviewed this guy. They gave him a pseudonym to protect him. Andy threatened to have something happen to him, either civil or ecclesiastical. But this guy sees this and they don't have a title page. And there's, you know, Andy's name is not on them. He honestly wouldn't have known what they were. He just apparently kind of saw him and reads through and quickly realizes, oh, this is fun. So he gives a copy to a friend of his who was on the BYU faculty and, you know, doesn't tell this guy, oh yeah, I found this dude's thing and copied it. He just gives them a copy. This is the culture of the time, right? You have something cool. Make photocopy. I mean, this is the PDF at the time, right? Friends and I do the same thing. They're like, oh, man, I got this scan of this killer document. Do you want a copy? Yes, please. So here the chain starts to branch out, right? So the friend gives a copy to a friend, he makes a couple copies. So over the next few months, some number of people, quietly and importantly, without Andy's knowledge or Lyndon's knowledge, these copies of this thing, that it would be fascinating to know who was the first person to figure out what they were. Because again, remember, none of this has been published. Clayton's name is not on it. And so it was just probably at the beginning this fascinating Nauvoo thing.

Julia [02:18:19] Also this making me. This makes me think so. And a lot of times I think in his journals he says, wc, right? He doesn't. I don't even know if it would be really obvious, like, no reading some of those.

Bryan Buchanan [02:18:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is nothing more aggravating than getting part of a document and having to figure out what it is. We got in something at the store the other day that was like, photocopy, same kind of thing of the original of some guy's autobiography. And I, I knew it wasn't worth my time, but I wanted the answer. And so I finally found, okay, this guy is writing. He says, I'm this guy's son in law kind of thing, right? That's what these people would have to do. They're like, okay, I've got initials. He mentions Margaret here or whatever. They would have to kind of triangulate to figure out who they were. Without the help of the Internet, I might.

Julia [02:19:08] Right, yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:19:09] No chat GPT on this case.

Julia [02:19:12] Okay, so you have September 19th of 1981. So the. The last one was set was in the summer when he puts it in his desk. September, you have Kelly Johnson. So I'm guessing so that you said they had a pseudonym for him.

Bryan Buchanan [02:19:22] And then his accident, he's identified at trial.

Julia [02:19:24] Okay, yes. So Kelly Johnson, member of BYU campus bishopric, using who use the same office as Linden, makes unauthorized copy and then gives copies to friends who do the same.

Bryan Buchanan [02:19:34] It's document mlm. It's great. And this is how it worked. You don't. You don't have email, you don't have Dropbox. You don't have any of this stuff. So this is how it worked is photocopies of things and usually transcripts like this. That's what. What's circulated.

Kolby Reddish [02:19:49] The unauthorized proliferation of contraband material. Right.

Bryan Buchanan [02:19:54] Oh, and if you're interested in rabbit holes, what is more entertaining than your friend being like, oh, check out this thing I just got. You're like, yeah. Yes, I want a copy now. Let's go. Let's go to Kinko's.

Julia [02:20:06] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:20:06] To where to? There's Kinkos. Not so much anymore.

Meggan Hayes [02:20:12] But Nemo's being cheeky.

Kolby Reddish [02:20:15] What's Kinko?

Meggan Hayes [02:20:17] It's a photocopy store where you would go to get to pay for photocopies of things back before cameras. Nice.

Bryan Buchanan [02:20:27] Just a nice. Nice.

Meggan Hayes [02:20:29] What Nemo's doing is flexing his age.

Kolby Reddish [02:20:32] And also the fact that it's not

Bryan Buchanan [02:20:35] a terrible name for this story from

Kolby Reddish [02:20:39] the other side of the pond. We don't have that here.

Meggan Hayes [02:20:42] I think it's a youth flex, Nemo. Just admit it.

Kolby Reddish [02:20:45] Yeah, it is 1997, baby.

Theft Allegations and the Provo Police Incident

Julia [02:20:51] Okay, so September 21, 1981. J. Bell and Scott Fallring run into Ehat at the BYU studies office. Ehat sees that they have a copy of his campus or his excerpts and goes nuts.

Kolby Reddish [02:21:03] Is that the official term for how he reacted? Goes nuts.

Bryan Buchanan [02:21:07] I love thinking about this moment. So again, remember we talked about Scott Follering? J. Bell. Kind of same thing. There's these younger students, slash grad student who love the nerdy Mormon history, right? They're all. They're interested in the fun and the rabbit holes. So they're all in the BYU studies office there on campus. And Andy Just notices, like, flowering's got a stack of papers and on top is a copy of his excerpts from the William Clayton Diaries. The Andy knows are.

Meggan Hayes [02:21:37] They're.

Bryan Buchanan [02:21:37] They're touchy, right? This was a very kind of don't ask, don't tell affair all the way around. All of a sudden, this dude has got a copy of my notes. And so the 70s press article says he bolted out of his seat. And what are you doing with those? And you can imagine these two guys reaction like, this is what we do, dude. We all have photocopies of random stuff. And so the rest of that night is reverse telephone. Right. Like, where did you get this from? Who gave it to you?

Kolby Reddish [02:22:11] It's like contact tracing for a pandemic.

Meggan Hayes [02:22:14] Yes.

Bryan Buchanan [02:22:14] We're trying to find patient zero, Right?

Kolby Reddish [02:22:16] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:22:17] And so he starts tracing it backwards and trying to round them all up. Because Andy knows this has the potential to not be great. He's got a master's thesis he's working on. They're doing this book. He's got these hopes of future projects that, given his proclivities toward the rabbit holes, these are touchy topics. And he's got to have the relationships of trust and access. This could damage all of that. And he will, in other conversations will. This will damage the church. This will damage Jim and Dean and everybody. And it gets messy really quickly.

Meggan Hayes [02:22:58] Yeah. Because like, worst case scenario, what if it were to end up in the hands of the Tanners? They were to publish it in their UTLM newsletter, by the way. I bring that up because. Because in my epic interview with Sandra Tanner 10 or more years ago, she tells her version of this whole story. And we should include a link to that. Julia.

Julia [02:23:21] Yeah. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:23:21] And y' all should go back and hear Sandra tell this story because she's hilarious and it's fun.

Bryan Buchanan [02:23:28] We'll get Sandra here in just a second with Scott following, of all people. So.

Julia [02:23:33] Yeah. But. So next, in September or November of 1981, Ehat speaks to the Provo City Police, BYU Security, and Boyd K. Packer.

Bryan Buchanan [02:23:44] This is so interesting. Andy is a very. He's a super interesting guy. He is very. It's a good word. He's very protective. He's very invested in his. His work, his. He feels very strongly. He's very passionate about Joseph Smith and Mormon history. And so the dealing with this, he goes all in. Right? So he talks to Provo police. They're like, how much is this worth? It's a photocopy. Well, get out of here, kid. BYU security, similar kind of thing. They're not going to do anything. So he gets a hold of Packer and explains the trickiness of this situation. I have an inkling that it was that conversation with Packer that triggers the next part of the story here, which

Julia [02:24:38] is that In November of 1981, BYU President Jeff Holland appoints Professor Noel Reynolds to investigate.

Bryan Buchanan [02:24:47] This is really interesting.

Meggan Hayes [02:24:48] I'm by the way, he's a political science professor, right. Not a Mormon history, political philosophy of all things.

Bryan Buchanan [02:24:55] Right.

Meggan Hayes [02:24:55] I know that because I was a. He was a faculty member when I studied political science.

Bryan Buchanan [02:24:59] That was so great. So he becomes part of the trial and it's clear that Noel is kind of confused and bemused by all this. He's like, what does this have to do with like, Iran Contra and the Middle East? Like, I don't care about Mormon history or the Book of Mormon. Like, this is boring. So, yeah, it's an odd choice. I don't know why Holland picked him, but I'm pretty confident that there was a phone call placed from Packer's office to Jeff's office saying, hey, Mr. Relatively New BYU President, you got a problem on your hands. Why don't you deal with this like yesterday? So because part of it is they have dealt with this somewhat through the 70s because part of the Mormon underground is microfilms. There's a vintage touch for you, even better than photocopies that have made their way out of archives, particularly the Historical department, and then quietly circulated things like the Wilford Woodruff journals, the Joseph Smith Collection, the manuscript history of the Church, things that are funny because these are all digitized now published. And so you have to remember at this time, ready access to this stuff is non existent. You got to know somebody or you got to try to get access at Historical department or at byu, which unless you're kind of an established researcher by this point, is becoming tougher. And so there's this culture of trading documents, trading microfilms. And this story is kind of right in the middle of all of this context. And so there's already been some issues, Right. If you go back to right around when Leonard Arrington is made church historian, you have the kerfuffle with Lester Bush, who is putting together this seminal dialogue article on the history of the temple and priesthood ban. And part of that was because he had access to this collection at BYU of an apostle named Adam Bennion who had had a copy of this sort of subject file that had been made. And then you also have a thing in the George Albert Smith collection up at the U. And so there were already rumblings about stuff keeps getting out that's problematic. And so this is another one of these.

Meggan Hayes [02:27:31] Problematic or factual and honest?

Bryan Buchanan [02:27:35] Well, yes, these are contemporary, original documents that show the messiness of things.

Meggan Hayes [02:27:41] Messy.

Bryan Buchanan [02:27:42] Yeah. And again, you know, remember we talked about our different groups, their perspectives, their motives, their goals. For a historian, there's no problem. This is what I want. I need this stuff to do my job at the next level. The administrators are sympathetic to the historians and the archivists, but they also have to answer to church leaders. And so we have all of this kind of slowly boiling tension over access. And so I think it's pretty safe bet that there's a call place from Packer's office to Holland's office. Do something now. And so Noel Reynolds, of all people, is like, oh, good, I get to go deal with this. This thing that I barely care about. His. His disinterest in it when he gets to is pretty palpable. It's almost funny.

Julia [02:28:37] I feel like this next one is kind of when the cat's out of the bag, because I feel like it's just been circulating through the school or through the church. And then this next part, it just, like, gets loose. So in late 1981 and 1982, a copy makes its way to Ernest Strack, who then sells it, sells them at Grandpa's Bookstore near BYU in Provo.

Bryan Buchanan [02:28:59] I love this part of the story because Ernest Strack, back to our, you know, our pandemic metaphor, he's a super spreader. So he has this wonky little bookstore document clearinghouse near campus. And guess what? It's either over a Kinko's or, like, right next door to a Kinko. There you go, Nemo. So part of the deal was is he would sort of have the masters in the back of all this random stuff that floated around on the underground. So do you need a typescript of the Joseph Smith 1832 journal? Go see Grandpa, Ernie. So as you saw that picture, it's roughly contemporary to this. He's a convert to Mormonism who

Guest [02:29:49] probably

Bryan Buchanan [02:29:50] by this point or shortly thereafter, gets actually drawn into fundamentalist orbits. And so he's this kind of. Everyone sort of describes him as this real mellow kind of hippie dude. And, you know, you'd bring him a cool document, he'd be like, oh, awesome, here, do you want a copy of this? And you just, you know, you go copy it. Right. So a copy of Ehat's excerpts makes its way to him. And you know, this is the underground hotspot in Provo of if you need something fun and, you know, kind of black market, go see Grandpa Ernie. So if you talk to guys like Gary Bergera and Ron Priddis and Maxine hanks, like the 70s press people, this is their era and they're like, oh yeah, Grandpa Ernie. And, and it was kind of, you know, like a hangout for Mormon history nerds and kind of people who are sort of on the, the fringes of Mormon history circles. So once it gets there, that's a problem because then it's going to start going all over the place.

Julia [02:30:52] When you were speaking, I don't know exactly when the Mark Hoffman stuff went down. It was in the 80s, right? I just. The passing of documents and the sharing of things.

Meggan Hayes [02:30:59] Early to mid-80s.

Bryan Buchanan [02:31:00] Yeah.

Guest [02:31:01] Okay. Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:31:01] First kind of biggish thing is with Gerald and Sandra, he takes them a purported transcript of the second anointing ceremony. That's sort of the first, the, the first kind of. He'd done some coin stuff apparently. So this is, this period is now we're getting into like the Anton transcript and we're getting closer to like Salamander Letter and the Joseph Smith iii. Again, this is all part of this culture of trading stuff quietly underground. Don't ask a bunch of questions if you don't like the answer. And so everyone like, where did you get this? Yeah, it's like, you know, turn your head and take the photocopy kind of thing. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's an important point.

Julia [02:31:41] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [02:31:41] And in fact, let's see when the trial goes to appeal. Spoiler alert. They were going, they wanted to bring in Steve Christensen as a witness to kind of this culture of the time. Of course that's going to be difficult because Steve has been killed by this point. So yeah, this, this whole story is, is in the Mark Hoffman era as well.

Julia [02:32:06] Perfect. Okay, so then you have the, the. On January 18th of 1982, BYU off campus newspaper 7th East Press breaks the story.

Bryan Buchanan [02:32:16] Yeah, this is so 7th East Press is this collection of the absolute people that I would have been friends with and am friends with many of them today. So again, this is that. This is Gary and Ron and Maxine and Albert Peck, all of these people who later become incredibly influential in Mormon history and Mormon studies. They're students at BYU writing this extremely ambitious off campus newspaper that is kind of like student sunstone. So we're reporting on fun stuff, exotic stuff, controversial stuff, you know, all of these things that the Daily Universe is not going to touch because they are being told not so subtly you don't get to touch this. And so of course when they learn about this, as you saw, this is front page news. And it's so interesting because they interview Andy Ehat. They interview the religion professor who also gets a pseudonym. They interview this kid who got a copy from somebody. Andy Ehat learns that he has a copy goes to him and this kid describes. They're walking across campus screaming at each other. This kid is swearing his head off at Andy and he's so mad. At the end of this, not only will he not give his copy back, he's like screw you, I'm gonna give copies to you every library I can think of.

Meggan Hayes [02:33:42] What was the headline in that article, Julia?

Nemo [02:33:45] Yeah.

Julia [02:33:46] Say, let me throw it up on the screen again.

Meggan Hayes [02:33:47] Read it to us.

Julia [02:33:50] Well which part?

Bryan Buchanan [02:33:51] That top right one. Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [02:33:53] Says no to Earth, Wind and fire.

Meggan Hayes [02:33:56] Read the restricted.

Julia [02:33:58] Restricted church document stolen with air with quotes.

Bryan Buchanan [02:34:02] Yep. I was bummed because this doesn't have a byline. I want to know who wrote this. Like in. I'm pretty sure it's that same issue. There's an article with Maxine Hanks name. Was this Gary? Was this Ron? Was this Albert? Like who wrote it? But so they talk about the Reynolds being tasked. I mean that's campus specific right. To investigate it. But yeah, they interview all the players and you get this fascinating. Like you can understand why this was front page news in an off campus newspaper of student. I mean these are guys who are interested in the rabbit holes of fun Mormon stuff already. So this is.

Meggan Hayes [02:34:40] I can imagine this and. And a copy of this edition landing on Jeffrey Holland's desk as BYU president and he's like why do we have this? I told you to deal with this.

Bryan Buchanan [02:34:51] No.

Meggan Hayes [02:34:52] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:34:53] Packer hears about it and calls Jeff Holland and is like I told you to deal with this Jeff.

Meggan Hayes [02:34:59] I mean and by the way, this whole not all things that are true are useful. That's happening in the early 80s right now.

Bryan Buchanan [02:35:07] This is packers talk. Yeah, this is Mike Quinn's on being a Mormon historian. That gets a Newsweek. This is right at that time 83. We have decided we are done with the Leonard vision of things.

Meggan Hayes [02:35:19] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:35:19] We've moved you down to BYU to give you more freedom to shut you up. And we still have problems.

Meggan Hayes [02:35:26] Didn't Packer have some quote like historians have a unnatural affection for the truth like that.

Bryan Buchanan [02:35:34] I forgot about that fetishization.

Meggan Hayes [02:35:37] A true fetish.

Bryan Buchanan [02:35:39] That was their Kinko was the truth.

Meggan Hayes [02:35:42] What Were you saying Nemo?

Kolby Reddish [02:35:44] I was just gonna say it seems like the church is creating some sort of kind of Streisand effect with some of this where they're like, the more they try and squash it or, or the old, you know, you cut off one head and two grow back in its place. It's like for every copy they try and get hold of, of this, then two more are being xeroxed or photography copied or whatever.

Bryan Buchanan [02:36:02] Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Very diligent at trying to get them all back. But we, we just, we described it as trying to put the, you know, the activated charcoal toothpaste back in the, the tube. Like it's never going to happen. Especially when you piss off Hal Palmer, who then will give it to every place he can think of. So the problem not only has not gone away, it's just getting bigger. And now the story broke and quiet like nobody knew about the, the investigation apparently until this point when the 70s press reported on it. This is part of the reason they get squashed.

Meggan Hayes [02:36:37] By the time I get to BYU in 87, there is no 7th East Press. There's a student review.

Bryan Buchanan [02:36:42] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [02:36:43] Which was like a Successor to the

Bryan Buchanan [02:36:44] 7th East Press, but not the same beast.

Meggan Hayes [02:36:47] No. But between 82, 83 and 87, this, this newspaper goes out of print.

Bryan Buchanan [02:36:52] Can you wonder, can you imagine why, John?

Meggan Hayes [02:36:54] Kind of like the Nautilus Positive. But this is going on while there was a Sunstone magazine, right?

Bryan Buchanan [02:37:01] Yes. And they, they, they talk about it too.

Meggan Hayes [02:37:03] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:37:04] It's so interesting because a lot of it is happening at the student level. Right?

Meggan Hayes [02:37:08] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:37:08] This is this research assistant, up and coming generation that's largely involved in this. It's not your published older generation historians.

Meggan Hayes [02:37:17] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:37:18] So it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's the up and comers. It's all the, because of that. These are all people that are still around. And we know. That's why I love modern history is I get to see Gary and Andy and you know, not Richard Danish, but like all these guys that we knew and we're friends with as kids.

Meggan Hayes [02:37:35] It's kind of like podcasters and bloggers and, and you know, Instagram and, and TikTok oftentimes creating stories these days outside of official channels.

Bryan Buchanan [02:37:47] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [02:37:47] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:37:48] And it's this kind of story. It's the fun, funky stuff. Exactly.

Julia [02:37:54] And then it gets worse. You have, after March 5th of 1982, book dealer Kent Walgren. Walgreen Walgren, provides copies to Gerald and Sandra Tanner.

Meggan Hayes [02:38:06] Oops.

Bryan Buchanan [02:38:07] So the reason it has the date that it does is if you. There was this fantastic, lengthy oral history that Scott Follering did with Sandra Tanner. So it's fun because Faldring is interested in the quirky, the exotic, the rabbit hole of Mormon history, but he's essentially a faithful Mormon still. But he's interested in this stuff. And so he kind of contacts Sandra out of the blue, and they even discuss it. He's like, you let me talk to you. And I kind of wondering why? And Sandra, you know Sandra, she's like, you seemed like a straight shooter. Why not? So in one episode, they kind of went chronologically, and it was based off their publications and issues of Messenger. So they just kind of marched through the history of lighthouse ministry. Fascinating, because you get Sandra talking about their history by the end as it's happening. Because in one interview, they're talking about how these diaries are starting to get out and Sandra doesn't have a copy. And then the next interview, she does publish it, and she says in there, we wanted a copy, but everyone was too scared to give us one. It wasn't until Kent Walgren gave us a copy and at trial it comes that he got his copy from Richard Van Wagener, who will go on to do important things. Right. So there's all these guys who are in Mormon history who you can't always get access to what you want through official channels. So the Mormon underground things that Gerald and Sandra are publishing are extremely helpful. Guess who has their stuff? Everybody. Orthodox people. They may not. They wouldn't say hi to Sandra and Gerald if they saw him, but they're more than happy to have their stuff on their shelf. Right. They wouldn't be caught dead talking to a fundamentalist, but they've got all of Ogden Kraut stuff on their shelf. So it's. It's an interesting bedfellows here.

Meggan Hayes [02:40:11] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:40:11] So they get a copy and of course, what are they gonna do? Let's. Let's put it out to the world. So In June of 1982, they do.

Julia [02:40:22] Yeah, but they. It says they published it. Then Clayton's secret writings uncovered and they blacked out. E hat's comments. Is that for. Is that for copyright reasons?

Bryan Buchanan [02:40:30] Exactly.

Julia [02:40:31] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [02:40:31] So Gerald's understanding of copyright, which will win the day eventually, is that you can't copyright a transcript. At trial, the judge will describe it as acting as a human Xerox machine. So that's really interesting. So that. That's. That's kind of big deal. Landmark case, especially Mormon history circles. So that's why it looks like that. And of course, Joan Sandra had a knack for good titles. Clayton's secret writings uncovered. They knew how to pitch things to the public. Right. So their intro is fascinating because they describe exactly why we still care about the Clayton journals. Because it tells you this much more complicated, way more colorful nauvoo than is usually depicted, especially at the center of all that polygamy. Clayton's own, but more importantly, Joseph Smith's polygamy. So then once they start selling it, it really starts going everywhere. And Andy has tried his best to keep it photocopies out of people's hands. Now it's been more or less published. Right. This.

Meggan Hayes [02:41:40] Can I just ask really quick if these, if. If this, if these diaries, if these journals by William Clayton were in any way likely to be fraudulent or written conspiratorially or not authentic or invalid, the church would have had every motivation to draw that conclusion so that they could not cause them problems. Right.

Bryan Buchanan [02:42:14] Sort of. But having to say these were created in. These were backdated enough in. In Utah by Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball and William Clayton and thrown on top of Joseph Smith. That's also a problem. So I. I can see why, if that were the case.

Guest [02:42:34] It's not.

Bryan Buchanan [02:42:34] But I mean, that's tough, too.

Meggan Hayes [02:42:36] Brigham had rewritten Lucy Mack Smith's biography and that was. That was known by this point, right?

Bryan Buchanan [02:42:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not. The revised version doesn't get published until much, much later. But they tried. They started the process.

Meggan Hayes [02:42:53] Well, I guess I'm saying they wouldn't have even had to. I'm just trying to address this attempt to invalidate these documents. Like, they wouldn't have had to even know or say that it was Brigham or Heber or whoever you could just say would have been in a conspiracy.

Bryan Buchanan [02:43:08] They're not authentic, Right.

Meggan Hayes [02:43:09] Yeah. They could have just said these aren't authentic. So we're. Because.

Julia [02:43:14] Well, and then.

Meggan Hayes [02:43:15] Embarrassing. Right.

Bryan Buchanan [02:43:16] That would have been that. I guarantee you they would have loved.

Meggan Hayes [02:43:19] They would have had every motivation.

Bryan Buchanan [02:43:21] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [02:43:21] To invalidate these as inauthentic at the time. And again, instead of like, be terrified. Keep them for so long hidden.

Bryan Buchanan [02:43:28] Especially because at this point, like, part of the problem here is there's this perception that historians are emotionally attached to polygamy being real. No, no. In this discussion. Wants polygamy to be real. Church leaders are not at all interested in talking about polygamy saying that it's divine. That's a. Put that as far under the rug as you can thing at this point, there are. Through the 70s, after the Lester Bush thing, there are some unofficial guidelines as to acceptable topics for a thesis under dissertation, for example. So at byu, if you want to do a topic on. If you wanted to write a thesis on Adam God, no. Polygamy. No. Harold B. Lee, who liked Leonard Arrington and was kind of sympathetic and supportive, was like, no, there are certain topics that we don't. They're the Bruno topics. We don't do those. So.

Meggan Hayes [02:44:31] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:44:31] So by this point, yeah, like, if this is not authentic and it's talking about polygamy, that's an easy fix. These are not real. These are inauthentic.

Meggan Hayes [02:44:42] Were you gonna say something, Julie?

Julia [02:44:43] Yeah, I was just gonna say that right now or in. Right shortly after this, you have the Mark Hoffman documents that are going around that are forgeries and that they are discovered. And so, like, I just feel like that is a topic of conversation at this point. Maybe not. Right, right. In 1882.

Bryan Buchanan [02:44:59] Real close.

Julia [02:45:00] Yeah, real close. So I feel like. Like it's in that soup, I guess, of exactly.

Meggan Hayes [02:45:04] They would have known that they had them since the 1850s.

Bryan Buchanan [02:45:09] Some people would have. Again, this is.

Julia [02:45:12] That's a good point.

Bryan Buchanan [02:45:13] I mean, you notice when the. The memo giving authorization, it gets the dates wrong. Like, the. The Clayton journals are not familiar to anybody because no one's seen them.

Meggan Hayes [02:45:24] Kind of like Joseph Smith's 1832 First Vision account was only known to, like,

Bryan Buchanan [02:45:29] Paul Chessman and Gerald and Sander kind of bring the topic back up. No one knows that it exists.

Meggan Hayes [02:45:35] Yeah. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [02:45:35] Yeah. This is a very different era.

Meggan Hayes [02:45:37] Yeah.

The Ehat vs. Church Legal Battle

Julia [02:45:38] Okay, so then we have two years later. Right. So this is March 21st of 1984. Now, so trial begins with Sherman Christensen as judge. And he's. He is a member of the church, right?

Bryan Buchanan [02:45:50] He is, Yep.

Julia [02:45:51] And then March 25th of 1984. So just a couple days later, a few days later, Christensen rules he agrees e had had no copyright, but awards 16,000 in damages to hat for unfair competition based on state law.

Bryan Buchanan [02:46:06] This part. And to be fair, if he wasn't Mormon, he should have changed his name. If you're Sherman Christensen in Utah and you're not Mormon, that's that. You could sue for that. Honestly, the trial is fascinating. So there are depositions of a whole bunch of people. And so on Andrew Ehat's side, you have Gordon Madsen as his counsel. This is Truman Madsen's brother. He is. He's involved in Mormon history circles. His wife is Carol Cornwall. She has done lots of Things on Mormon history, women's history, did a biography of Emmaline Wells. So these are, these are well connected people in Mormon history circles. On the, on Geraldine Sanders side, you have Brian Barnard from the aclu. Brian is not, you know, he's not Mormon. He's not personally super interested in Mormon history, but he can sense the lay of the land. And the depositions are endlessly interesting. This is why I said when we did these episodes, I did more prep work for these because it was hundreds and hundreds of pages of just fascinating stuff. So we get this culture of the underground. And who are the players? Who are you getting stuff from? What kind of stuff are you getting from them? One of my favorite things is when Scott Follering is deposed, he talks about how his copy of, I think it was the Wilford Woodruff journals was better than the copy that BYU's library had. So they asked if they could make a copy of his microfilm. And Scott Follering will tell how Fred Collier explains to him how they snuck microfilms out. So you go in with another microfilm, get the one you want, switch roux, the good one goes in your pocket, you go out for lunch, make a copy, come back in, switch roo back. And now you've got a. You've got a good microfilm copy of this. This stuff that's restricted. And so the depositions are so fascinating because again, nobody is asking for permission if they don't think they need to. And so everybody has kind of got partitioned knowledge of things. And they bring in all of these guys we've talked about. And so when they bring Don Schmidt in, who again is over accessible, he will say things like, I didn't know that they had made this typescript. That's, you know, a lot of questions are like, oh, I learned about that today. You know, I was today years old when I learned this at the time. And it gets a little problematic when it becomes clear that sometimes people are not being fully honest about things. And there's this great exchange in Jim Allen's deposition because Brian Barnard is pretty sure that Dean Jesse also helped with the typescript. And Jim for some reason doesn't want to tell him that. So they dance around it. And you, you get a picture of the feistiness lawyer. So Gordon Manson is like, I don't think that's relevant. Don't answer that. And Brian Barn is like, I still get to ask the question. And so they go off the record, they come back, and Brian Barnard's like, okay, I'm Just going to ask you point blank, did Dean Jesse help with the typescript? He's like, yeah, I did. And that will. That will become very relevant in a little while. So you get that. And then they go to trial. And, you know, depositions are kind of one thing. Trial, you're under oath. Like, you can get nailed for perjury. So I don't knows. And unclear. Things get clearer at trial. And so we get fascinating details about all of this. And ultimately the judge, who is old Sandra, will later say we weren't totally sure if he was. Faculties were still all there. He will say that, no, you can't copyright the transcript. But he says, you know, Andy was trying to turn his thesis into a book, and the Clayton stuff is out there, and it's damaged his reputation, has damaged the appeal of his book. So he awards him damages, essentially, and based on a state statue, a Utah state statute, and then also puts an injunction on Gerald and Sandra continuing to publish the excerpts Clayton's secret writings. He actually later reverses that injunction not too soon after. And Gerald and Sandra were basically just going to give up until, I think it was Wes Walters. So this last from the past, right?

Meggan Hayes [02:50:58] Legend.

Bryan Buchanan [02:50:59] Yeah. So my interview, Chris Thomas, we talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He. I think it was him. Tells them, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can. You can beat this on appeal. And they're like, all right. And it's so wild because they're like, this is going to be 10,000 more dollars. You're like, oh, shoot, geez. Everything was cheaper. And they fight it and they win. And the. The decision is essentially that this state statute that they had, the judge had looked to was preempted by a federal statute. And so it's reversed. That's it. And so that means that not only do they not have to pay the, The. The damages to Andy, actually Andy was supposed to pay their court costs. And I thought this was pretty generous. Sandra says that we knew that he couldn't. And so they said, you know, give us a dollar, we'll call it good. Wow.

Meggan Hayes [02:51:55] Plaintiff or a defendant?

Bryan Buchanan [02:51:56] No, they are subpoenaed and things are requested during discovery. They have essentially no role at all. Curt McConkey quashes everything that comes their way. And there is some rumblings that Sherman, as a Mormon, might have been a little too cozy. I mean, I don't. I don't think that's anything in Utah, like, with any Supreme Court nominees right now are an issue, but same kind of thing back then. And so, yeah, they don't have to pay the damages and they can keep publishing. And the long term thing that I think is most interesting is essentially this opinion that you couldn't copyright the transcript. So that's the end of that. So that's the trial part of it. I could spend a year on the depositions and trial. There are so many interesting things coming.

Kolby Reddish [02:52:59] This decision is probably going to make the church very, very nervous to allow anyone to transcribe anything because essentially what it does is it takes that is copyrightable. The church's diaries that they own copyrights either owned by the estate of the family or it's owned by the church itself. The moment that becomes a transcript, then they lose control of it essentially.

Bryan Buchanan [02:53:19] Right. The Joseph Smith diaries are published in 1987, I believe as the first volume of signature significant Mormon diary series. I don't think that that's coincidental. And so, yeah, this is a big deal in Mormon history. Questions of access, ownership, publication rights, all those kinds of things.

Julia [02:53:44] Yeah. So this is this part right here where just this is all December, right. Of 1985.

Bryan Buchanan [02:53:48] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. So here's the appeal.

Julia [02:53:50] So court of appeals rules that Ehad's plea to state law was permit was preempted by federal law and reverse lower court appeal of appeal denied.

Bryan Buchanan [02:54:02] So game over. And Jill and Sandra are very happy and continue publishing. And that feels fairly vindicated to how they approach things is like you can't copyright transcripts of things. And so I, I also don't think it's coincidental that access really starts to close down in the mid-80s because like we've mentioned, not only do you have this, but you have Mark Hoffman. And so I think church leaders have decided that door is way too far open and it goes swinging back shut. And it's around this time trying to think because this is Mike Quinn quit even going to the historical department because they instituted an agreement where everyone had to submit everything before publication for essentially approval. So I'm pretty sure this is like 87, 88 that that agreement is enacted. So this is again, this is fallout of all of this stuff. And this is a real chilling effect on Mormon historians. It's tough to get access to things. And so this is kind of where signature books really starts to take off because this is trying to get primary sources, biographies, you know, controversial, touchy subjects, get it out there. So that's another part of this, this developing dynamic.

Meggan Hayes [02:55:33] Man, this is so cool. We're three hours in and we haven't even talked about what's in the journals.

Julia [02:55:40] We're getting there.

Meggan Hayes [02:55:44] I love this type of history. This is the fun stuff for me.

Julia [02:55:47] Yeah. Okay. So in that Same year of 1987, Jim Allen publishes Trials of the Story of William Clayton, a Mormon from the University of Illinois. And he uses diaries heavily and he wins awards, which you'd mentioned.

Bryan Buchanan [02:56:03] So finally, here it is. Great biography. Jim was a good historian. He was a good writer. This was it. This is what he'd been working on forever. The trial and all the PR about it did not help his case. I'm sure that there might have been some conversations behind the scenes, like, I don't know that you should publish this, Jim, but he does. It's University Press again, wins, I think best book award and is important. This is one of the best examples of a non leader kind of second tier person who is nonetheless at the center of all these things and does a good job of showing the complexities of his life.

Meggan Hayes [02:56:46] Yeah. After all the books that got scuttled in the Leonard Arrington administration, it's surprising this one saw the light of day.

Bryan Buchanan [02:56:54] Yeah, it is interesting. It's so funny to see Jim being suspected by Ezra Taft Benson as kind of being subversive because he could not have been further from that. He was the nicest guy. So friendly, just and probably faithful and loyal. Absolutely.

Meggan Hayes [02:57:12] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:57:13] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that's. That is definitely misreading him for sure.

Julia [02:57:18] Yeah. And so then you have a few years later in 91, which we've already spoken about, where George D. Smith publishes an intimate Chronicle and He's using E hat's excerpts. And then after this you have 1995 Jim Allen reviews Intimate Chronicle in the BYU studies. And he says the main value of this publication is it brings. Is that it brings together in one volume significant portions of Clayton's journals along with some other writings. And then in referring to ehat's E hat excerpts that Smith used an agglomeration of unconnected except as they related to ehat studies and out of context. Context excerpts that piqued the interest of the curious because they seemed somewhat sensational. Is he saying here like he's just. He's just publishing the juicy stuff? Is that.

Bryan Buchanan [02:58:07] Yep, and we'll get to it here. It's like, well, that's kind of all I have. And so this will be a very public and very spirited and detailed exploration of this question of access, who should get access to what? And it's certainly not settled and it's of interest to everyone on kind of both sides of the aisle there. So then George responds, which is fantastic.

Julia [02:58:44] Nemo, do you want to read this slide? This is George's response in dialogue.

Kolby Reddish [02:58:48] So in 1997, George Smith responded in dialogue. The value of the volume would unquestionably have been explained had I had access to the entire document or been able to publish other entries that I acquired information about. George reported he suggested a collaboration with Jim as early as 1988. Now that the way has been paved, hopefully Alan or others will soon publish a complete copy of the Nazi journal.

Meggan Hayes [02:59:17] This is 30 years ago.

Kolby Reddish [02:59:19] It would take 20 years for the churches to announce they're going to do it. Allan then responded regarding the Nauvoo Journal excerpts. This is not a criticism of Smith's editing, for he did a good job with what he had before him. It is simply part of my concern over whether this journal should have been published at all in that form. Smith had the last word. The community is ill served by an elitist system which allows one historian to hold a document and with feigned impartiality, then issues judgments which fault others for not having the same access.

Julia [02:59:51] That's such a great line.

Bryan Buchanan [02:59:53] This was really interesting. So Dialogue published Jim's initial review. George's response, Jim's response, George's re response. So it was very. They said, you know, this is aptly appearing in the pages of Dialogue. So it was, it was a, it was a spirited and very interesting discussion about these topics.

Meggan Hayes [03:00:13] George is such a legend and outside of the people who really are into Mormon studies, nobody knows who he is. It's so dumb.

Bryan Buchanan [03:00:22] Yeah, it is interesting because, you know, he definitely has kind of that, that, that push the envelope a bit, you know, trying to, let's nudge things along here, boy. And so you get kind of that push and pull over the 90s over what kinds of history need to be told and how and where and using what kind of stuff. So, yeah, George is like, I, trust me, I would have loved to have the whole thing. I didn't get it.

Meggan Hayes [03:00:47] Is his wife Camilla. Camilla, yeah, yeah. People won't maybe not put this together. If you watch any PBS historical documentary these days, you'll hear them do a shout out to like the George and Camilla Smith foundation because they like fundamentally Ken Burns documentaries for pbs in addition to all the work they do with, with signature and dialogue, Very, very wealthy, influential and charitable people.

Bryan Buchanan [03:01:22] So while this is all going on, church leaders are watching all of this take place. Right? We've got this, we've got the trial, we've got Mark Hoffman. Now they're arguing about this like, we want out. Right. So this is why it takes so long right here is because they got burned and they're just like, nope, we're not doing Clayton. We're done with the diaries. Just, you know, all right, Jim, you published your book. Great. George did.

Nemo [03:01:48] All right.

Bryan Buchanan [03:01:49] Crap. All right, Just shove it. Let's just not talk about Clayton. We're not talking about the messiness of polygamy and Nauvoo, certainly not officially.

Legacy of the Diaries and the September Six

Meggan Hayes [03:02:00] I. I wonder if all of this helped contribute to the September 6 excommunications in 1993, because this is a lot of drama.

Bryan Buchanan [03:02:08] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [03:02:09] That would. That would make the Brethren just be sick of historians.

Bryan Buchanan [03:02:14] Right? Yeah. Well, that's. You know, you have different avenues, right, to paths to excommunication, but you have. You have historians like Quinn, you have Lavina, who are. Are talking about these subjects that a lot of people would prefer just stay silent and, you know, historians. That pendulum kind of goes back and forth, and by 1993, historians doing probing, push the envelope kind of history is definitely not being welcomed. For sure.

Meggan Hayes [03:02:47] Yeah.

Julia [03:02:49] Okay, so next we've got. And this is 2002, Jim Allen publishes revised no Toil nor Labor, the Story of William Clayton in BYU studies. Includes appendix showing diary entries used in the history of the Church.

Bryan Buchanan [03:03:03] So here's our boy here again. A great book. And that appendix was fascinating because now we have additional stuff from the Clayton journals that we didn't have. And so this is really interesting because that was kind of bold for Jim, in the wake of all this stuff, to continue to talk about Clayton and to address touchy subjects. So kudos to him for being willing to do this. You know, by 2002, it's kind of. It's kind of thawed a bit. Right. A lot of the angst of the 90s has mellowed somewhat. So things are on the up as far as access by this point. So this is about when. I think that's the same year that Selected Collections is published with scans of thousands of documents. So. And I remember that. Yeah. So we're starting.

Meggan Hayes [03:03:56] It's like a CD or dvd, right?

Bryan Buchanan [03:03:58] Dozens of them.

Meggan Hayes [03:03:59] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [03:03:59] With some. Some fun stuff. There were redactions, but this is a big step forward. We're starting to talk about rebooting the Joseph Smith Papers project here. So this. We're.

Meggan Hayes [03:04:09] We're.

Bryan Buchanan [03:04:09] This is a. The pendulum is going back the other way, basically.

Meggan Hayes [03:04:12] The September 6th trauma starts to thaw in the early 2000s.

Bryan Buchanan [03:04:16] Yep. Yeah. We start to the Access is opening. And, you know, this is when I

Meggan Hayes [03:04:21] lose my faith because I start reading signature books, books like Simon Southerton's, you know, Losing a Lost Tribe, Grant Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, Michael Quinn's Origins and Extensions of Power. All those books were heavily influential on me at Microsoft in the early 2000s.

Bryan Buchanan [03:04:41] Yeah, we're just. Mormon history is not. Is. Is kind of starting to kick back up again as access opens. Right.

Meggan Hayes [03:04:48] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [03:04:48] People are feeling safer and feeling more inclined to start talking about tougher things again.

Meggan Hayes [03:04:53] Yeah. And the Internet's. The Internet's on the.

Bryan Buchanan [03:04:55] Right, The Internet's coming along here.

Meggan Hayes [03:04:57] Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [03:04:57] A great democratizer.

Nemo [03:04:59] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [03:05:00] And Nemo's still in diapers.

Kolby Reddish [03:05:03] What year?

Bryan Buchanan [03:05:05] 2002.

Kolby Reddish [03:05:06] Oh, no, I. I'm able to take myself to the lavatory by then. John. I'm five years old, for goodness sake.

Bryan Buchanan [03:05:11] Documents tell a different story.

Meggan Hayes [03:05:13] Well, I just. I just thought you learned late. I thought you were putty trained. Late Nemo, That's.

Kolby Reddish [03:05:17] No, no, no. Late blooming here.

Meggan Hayes [03:05:22] Okay.

Julia [03:05:23] Okay. So. So next, by 2003, Robert or Bob filler up posts online versions of Clayton's diaries, pulling together everything available.

Bryan Buchanan [03:05:32] Here we go. Here's your Internet. Right. So this pulls together basically everything from Intimate Chronicle. This will pull together what Jim Allen has contributed. So everything that Bob can kind of pull together in one place is now just there on the Internet. So that's. We start to see more of this. In the past, a photocopy of a transcript now becomes something posted online. So you don't have to know the guy with photocopy. You just have to have a computer.

Meggan Hayes [03:05:59] Something that we haven't discussed yet that I'm sure we're going to. But it also would be interesting to hear about this in the context of the time. By the time the Tanners. Well, even before, when the photocopies are being shared and the lawsuits going on and then the Tanners publish it. Are there a bunch of key elements to what's actually in the published portions of the William Clayton diary that are like scandalous or, you know, for sure, big ticket items that back in the late 80s, early 90s were alarming to people and scandalous.

Bryan Buchanan [03:06:40] Absolutely. That's. That's why when George publishes this. Okay, that's. That's huge because now.

Meggan Hayes [03:06:46] Because we're not talking about that. The impact of these things being published in terms of the knowledge.

Bryan Buchanan [03:06:52] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [03:06:52] And the history they convey.

Bryan Buchanan [03:06:53] Absolutely. Yeah. So this is where. This is kind of the period where people are really starting to grasp just how messy polygamy was.

Meggan Hayes [03:07:04] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [03:07:05] Especially Nauvoo. Right. So you had Richard Van Wagener's Mormon polygamy in 85.

Meggan Hayes [03:07:12] You had no man knows my history.

Bryan Buchanan [03:07:13] Right. No man knows my history. But again, like she had limited stuff. Right. She's, she's relying on. She would have had John Bennett's book, she would have had some newspaper things, but she, she wouldn't have had access to primary sources. Hardly any.

Meggan Hayes [03:07:31] But she got over 30 wives. Right, right. And she, she got polyandry. Right, Right.

Bryan Buchanan [03:07:37] So think about that with what she had.

Meggan Hayes [03:07:39] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [03:07:40] You know, comparatively speaking, the, the amount of access she had. She, well, did that.

Meggan Hayes [03:07:45] I mean, she had, I mean the big things are for me are 14 year old Helen Mark Kimball, she got that. Mother, daughter pairs.

Bryan Buchanan [03:07:53] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [03:07:54] Sister pairs, the number of total wives.

Bryan Buchanan [03:07:57] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [03:07:57] The, the, the, the polyandry, you know, the marrying women who are already married and then just kind of a lot of the coercion. Right.

Bryan Buchanan [03:08:09] No Internet, minimal access.

Meggan Hayes [03:08:11] She got all that. Okay. So that's, I mean, that makes me wonder what, what else was in the Clayton diaries that would have been scandalous in the late 80s, early 90s.

Bryan Buchanan [03:08:22] Right.

Meggan Hayes [03:08:22] And I imagine we're going to talk about that.

Bryan Buchanan [03:08:23] Yeah. This is going to be less like major. It's going to be more contextual, I guess is probably the best way to put it. Right. Okay, so now we know that here, Lucy Walker. Right. Here's Clayton's entry. I married Lucy Walker to Joseph Smith. There's the, the record of the man who performed the ceremony, those kinds of things. So I, you know, here is Clayton's journal entry in July saying, wrote a revelation of 10 pages. So you, you've got that contemporary record of things that were either known or kind of rumored to have happened.

Meggan Hayes [03:09:01] It's like filling in missing pieces that really.

Bryan Buchanan [03:09:04] Nailing a bunch of stuff down.

Meggan Hayes [03:09:05] It's. So that kind of substantiate or validate

Bryan Buchanan [03:09:09] the stories we think that this happened. This happened.

Meggan Hayes [03:09:12] Wow. That's the shift I see. Go Julius.

Julia [03:09:15] Sorry, I can't remember what I was going to say before. But we have this Last 1 of 2010, the Nauvoo Diaries of William Clayton. 1842, 1846, Abridged are published and this is including Michael Quinn's excerpts.

Bryan Buchanan [03:09:29] This was an interesting one. So it's not the most fun cover, you know, not a whole lot going on there. But the big one here are Quinn's additional entries. A lot of them that had totally flown under the radar. George apparently didn't know about them. Bob Filler up online version didn't have them. They were back in Mike's papers at the Beinecke, at the, at Yale University. So those were included in here. Plus basically everything that Andy had done that was in Intimate Chronicle. So here's kind of a supercharged version of these with a lot more content. Again, this is before any announcement that, that the full Nauvoo journals were going to be published.

Julia [03:10:13] And I just have a quick question. So we have people now who are going around saying that they've. They're releasing certain parts that have never been seen before. Is this. Does this little brown book, does it have. Did anything surprise you, like, with these new things that have come out in these PDFs, like, were there new entries?

Bryan Buchanan [03:10:30] There were definitely new entries. So here's a good. This is the time to really talk about kind of why we're doing this episode now is we've got a guy out there, let's call him Tom Truitt, who apparently has gained access to this transcript that Jim Allen and Dean Jesse put together. The story is that a man who had been Jim Allen's doctor made friends with him. This is the part that everyone is kind of not loving, is that he says he got to know Jim and while Jim is in assisted living in his 90s, talks Jim into giving him a copy of what complete transcript of those three Navo journals.

Meggan Hayes [03:11:16] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [03:11:17] Seems to be legitimate. You know, I don't see any reason to question that. That's what that is. It's a problem. Many people ask Jim over the years. I asked Jim, he said, no. My friend, every Anderson post on Facebook who was working on a biography of Willard Richards, he's a legitimate researcher with a very germane research interest, said, no, I don't know.

Meggan Hayes [03:11:41] And is that just sour grapes that. That y' all didn't have the relationship with Jim that this other guy did?

Bryan Buchanan [03:11:47] Kind of how it's being painted, which

Kolby Reddish [03:11:50] for me, as a, as a former medical professional, the idea that this doctor, while in a assisted living environment, makes that kind of personal request to someone, even if they're a friend, I would be. I would not be doing that kind of thing for fear of accusations of abuse of my position as a practitioner.

Meggan Hayes [03:12:11] Well, it's unethical.

Kolby Reddish [03:12:13] Yeah, that's. That's the blunt way of putting that. Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [03:12:17] It's. People are not loving the, the avenue it took to get here.

Meggan Hayes [03:12:22] It's taking advantage of an old elderly person.

Bryan Buchanan [03:12:26] It doesn't look great. It does not look great.

Meggan Hayes [03:12:28] And so when. And I Want to respect the fact that you don't want to say this guy's name when you don't want to say his name.

Bryan Buchanan [03:12:34] Why is that to me, again, the amount of work that goes into creating something like this. Problem is this guy then wants to publish it with commentary. Feels like piggybacking off someone else's work. And again, let's say that Jim gave the transcript. It was pretty much all above board. News of this waited until after Jim and Dean's death.

Meggan Hayes [03:13:04] How many years?

Bryan Buchanan [03:13:05] So, so Dean passed away in December. Jim passed away in. Sometime in 2024. So if there's no problem, then why are we waiting till after they pass away? And again, again, let's assume they were given freely. No problems there. I find it very difficult to think that Jim and Dean both would not be horrified that this is how that transit. This transcript is going to be used to essentially say historians have gotten the story all wrong. Joseph Smith was not a polygamist. These diaries are a later creation, backdated.

Meggan Hayes [03:13:43] So that's how the person who we're choosing not to name is choosing to frame the meaning of the release of this long awaited one.

Bryan Buchanan [03:13:55] All of it in context. You can see why historians have gotten

Meggan Hayes [03:13:59] it wrong to push the anti. The Joseph didn't practice.

Bryan Buchanan [03:14:04] Joseph fought it.

Meggan Hayes [03:14:05] Which is why we showed Michelle Stone and Karen Hyatt's clip at the beginning.

Bryan Buchanan [03:14:09] Yeah, this is a person associated with Michelle and with Karen.

Meggan Hayes [03:14:14] Wow. So this guy's not making friends.

Bryan Buchanan [03:14:16] Not making friends. And the latest twist in this story is this person is arguing that the transcript is actually not created by Jim and Dean. It was created by Enith Romney. Problem is that's not the right name. The name you're going for is Edith Romney, who was a longtime employee of the historical department. Decades. E, D, Y, T, H. Yeah.

Kolby Reddish [03:14:40] So just looking at my keyboard, D and N not too close to each other. So not going to be a typo.

Bryan Buchanan [03:14:44] Yeah, this. Yeah. Problems with that are. One, we have a register of what Edith created. It's not on there. We have Jim in his deposition and under oath of trial explaining exactly how the transcript was made. We read that journal entry from Leonard's, right. They get the journals, they start reading through them and they're like, oh, check out this cool stuff. If there's already a transcript made before that. And then the other part of the argument as well, because she created it, not Jim, it wasn't his. And so everything. What difference does that make? Because it's a woman. We can, we can take it and use it like, I don't know, there's a lot of problems with it. And it's not loving how this is playing out.

Kolby Reddish [03:15:25] We've established there's no copyright on a transcript. Right. So all someone has to do is get access to it and they're, I guess, technically capable to do with it what they want. That's what the precedent has been set by that other trial seems to be.

Bryan Buchanan [03:15:38] Yeah. It would be interesting to see if there were another trial now, if that earlier kind of legal history would hold up or if it would be reversed. I know, but what we have learned

Kolby Reddish [03:15:50] with experience, through commentating on the church or certainly I've learned, is that there's a difference between what is legal and what is ethical or what is moral or what is the right thing to do. And just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Guest [03:16:03] Right.

Bryan Buchanan [03:16:04] And again, this is all in the backdrop. Like we're going to have a published, annotated, meticulous edition that will be based off consulting the originals very, very soon. So, yeah, if you want Clint diaries, that's coming.

Julia [03:16:23] Are you kind of saying that maybe this individual is wanting to publish their take first before Yale? I don't want to put words in

Bryan Buchanan [03:16:29] your mouth, but it does certainly seem like there is a clear desire to frame the Clayton diaries based on everything we've talked about in a specific way. Because the. The surface reading of this is pretty clear. Joseph Smith was a polygamist. So there's got to be something done, if you don't think so, with Clayton diaries. And that's one of the methods.

Kolby Reddish [03:16:55] Imagine you are someone who wants to deny that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. And so as we've seen in other instances. Instances you need to undermine the legitimacy of the source material or call it into question or say, oh, why is it so sneaky? Why is it so dodgy looking? If you can get it out there first with your take on it, that this as much as it looks like Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, I'm the first person to publish this and I can speak to its provenance, and its provenance is questionable, which means that we don't know this is actually written by Clayton Bubble or whatever, whatever they're going to try and do with it. Yeah. Getting your narrative out there first, Are

Meggan Hayes [03:17:33] we saying it's kind of poisoning the well?

Kolby Reddish [03:17:35] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [03:17:35] Let me tell you why the big city fat cat historians are wrong. That's how it is.

Meggan Hayes [03:17:41] Julia, really quick. I saw you write at some point Ben park was weighing in on why this was an irresponsible way to release a document like this. Aside from the medical ethics, is there anything that you are going to or can share about why Ben park didn't like this approach? And if we're going to talk about it later, we can wait.

Julia [03:18:01] Well, I wasn't planning on it, but I have it up. I have the link. I can just share. Do we want to just look at it?

Meggan Hayes [03:18:06] Just summarize if you want.

Julia [03:18:08] What I remember most is just that this is an older gentleman and he's in the hospital. And then just getting it that way, that's all I can recall. But I'll put it in the show notes too.

Meggan Hayes [03:18:16] Okay. All right.

Julia [03:18:17] That would be helpful.

Bryan Buchanan [03:18:17] There's this history of Jim being asked and him again, like in this culture of this was all kind of touchy. So, you know, he's a loyal, faithful. He doesn't want to cause problems. He doesn't. Doesn't seem like he feels like he has authorization to share it with people. A pattern of this over years until this one and then to be used for this purpose. Sorry, don't buy it.

Meggan Hayes [03:18:46] Yeah. Okay.

Kolby Reddish [03:18:48] The William Clayton journals are so interesting that this episode took five and a half hours to record. So we're going to leave it here for today and pick up in our next episode where we'll be diving into exactly what is in the journals, in particular, some of the more controversial things which the Church may have been reluctant to have come to light. As always, I'll remind you that the Mormon Stories podcast is made entirely possible by the support of viewers and listeners like you. So if you value this work and want to see it continue, please consider liking subscribing and becoming a monthly donor. Go to mormonstories.org and hit the donate button. Thanks again for joining us and we'll see you again very soon for another LDS Discussions edition of the Mormon Stories Podcast.