Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John Dehlin. It is September 4th, Labor Day, 2023, and we are here in part two of an epic series on the history of Mormon polygamy in, I don't know, four, five hours, something like that. We'll see. But we are so honored to have back in our studio again the Lindsay Hansen park of your polygamy and Sunstone fame. Hey, Lindsay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:00:29] Hello.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:00:30] Polygamy. What fun.

John Dehlin [00:00:33] Yeah, it is fun. It's dark. Why do we laugh at dark things? That's a bad part of our business. We laugh at dark things.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:00:40] It's all the trauma. It's a trauma response. I think we laugh because it's a way to heal. So I actually don't apologize for that.

John Dehlin [00:00:49] Okay, me either.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:00:50] It is not a year of polygamy. Just a few hours, everybody. So settle down. Not an eternity like some women RFM calls it.

John Dehlin [00:01:00] What does he call it? A decade of polygamy? Is that what he's. Something like that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:01:03] I've heard it all. It's all deserved.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] Anyway, we're excited to have Lindsay back and the Brian Buchanan of Benchmark Books. Hey, Brian.

Bryan Buchanan [00:01:13] Hi, everybody. Good to be back.

John Dehlin [00:01:15] Thanks for coming. Well, if you didn't catch part one of this series, pause this episode, go back to part one. We are covering. We lovingly call called this episode. I think you called it Lindsay isn't one wife enough. I think I call. I think. I don't know. It's like the. What do we call it? What was the code name for this series like?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:01:41] Was Brian's title. What was it?

Bryan Buchanan [00:01:43] Oh, the polygamy history you didn't learn in seminary. There it is.

John Dehlin [00:01:45] All the polygamy history you didn't learn in LDS seminary. And last episode, we went from Joseph Smith and even his predecessors through the martyrdom in 1844 in Nauvoo. And there are two major kind of periods to go. There's kind of Brigham Young, early Utah polygamy, and then I think we're going to be talking about FLDS and fundamentalist polygamy as a part three. We'll see whether we actually end up doing this in two parts or three. But we're just going to see where we get. So Joseph Smith dies at the hands of a mob.

Bryan Buchanan [00:02:27] Spoiler alert.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:02:28] This is why I know the Book of Mormon is true. Because the pride cycle is real. We came in here last time and we're like, we're gonna do the whole thing without notes, and then at the very end, I didn't even stick the landing with the Mormon expositor. We're like, and Joseph Smith died the end. I feel like we didn't cover so much. But I'm excited. Cause today's my favorite time period in history, which is the Utah period, the frontier stuff, the cowboy stuff.

Corrections, Disclaimers, and Joseph Smith's Inner Circle

John Dehlin [00:02:54] Now, did you have disclaimers or anything you wanted to say about last episode or corrections or.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:03:00] I was just kind of agonizing because we were talking a lot about, you know, very sensitive things. Sexual assault, rape, sex. And I, you know, I. We laugh at things, we make jokes. And I made a joke about porn usage amongst Mormon men or their, their search history and compared it to Joseph Smith. And I kind of agonized over that. Because while it is true that Mormons are sex obsessed, I gotta be careful that I'm not like sex shaming our community that has like so seeped in shame because we are a church that's so obsessed with, with this topic. So I just wanted to like contextualize that and hope that I'm being sensitive when I'm talking about this.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:03:39] I want to allow for there's so much pain around these issues. And so we do kind of make jokes about them sometimes because we interact with this stuff all the time. And it's really, really dark and heavy. And so, yeah, I just want to make sure that I'm holding space for all different stuff. I do think that polygamy is about power, but I also want to recognize that, like, that doesn't dismiss the sexual part. And so I hope I didn't do that in the last episode.

John Dehlin [00:04:08] All right, well, we're not going to ever make these, you know, make things perfect, but it's nice that we're trying, so that's good.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:04:16] I just, I think it's so hard. I mean, I remember blogging for feminist Mormon Housewives. And, you know, I've spoken out about the shame the church does, especially with the men on this issue. And I recognize it's such a wound for women too. I feel like it's such a. These topics are so hard for people because there's so much trauma and they reach people in different. And you don't have to be from a fundamentalist community, you can be from an LDS community and the pain will hook you in different ways that you don't anticipate. So, yeah, I just want to hold space for all of that mess while we're talking about this today, because we're going to be talking about some really dark stuff, like really Heavy stuff. Not just, you know, sex or assault, but violence and murder and racism and all that kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:05:04] So take care about who's within viewing or listening distance. Viewer discretion is advised.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:05:11] I would say. I would say. So, yeah. They don't call it the Wild west for nothing.

John Dehlin [00:05:16] Okay. All right. I have a question. This isn't necessarily on your notes. So Joseph had a small circle of people in the know about polygamy, but I'm assuming there were a lot of top leaders that didn't know. And I don't even know if there's a way to sort of, like, take the first presidency, the apostles, the general authorities, and even get a sense for what percentage were knew and didn't. But as we talk about the succession crisis, I wonder if that plays in the kind of people who knew the principle and were in on the secret versus those who weren't. Is that an okay place to start?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:05:57] I think that's a great place to start. Do you want to speak to that first?

Bryan Buchanan [00:06:00] Sure. So at Joseph Smith's death, there are about 25 men and about 100 women that are involved in polygamy. So it's a small group, but it's a very powerful group. And so on the one hand, you have the Brigham Youngs, the Heber Kimballs, who are definitely in on it, who have married plural wives. But then you have guys like Sidney Rigdon who are on the outs, and you have guys like, he's known about

John Dehlin [00:06:21] it because Jason had propositioned his wife. He knew his daughter, Nancy. Right. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:06:26] Yeah. I would say at that point, there probably aren't any leaders that don't know, but there are definitely some who are not practicing, who are not in that circle, really.

John Dehlin [00:06:38] I guess the Navajo Expositor removed all doubt.

Bryan Buchanan [00:06:40] Definitely.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:06:42] Well, I mean, for the leadership, because we need to remember that there's still this huge amount of people that are believing the public denials. And that's going to play into the Utah period later on when you've got a lot of people who find out when the church is open about it, and they're like, wait a minute, what was that whole last decade of denial about? So it is the leaders. But what's interesting about the succession crisis, and Brian and I go into this in quite detail on our Sense of Mormon History podcast, so you can listen to it. But a lot of the breakoff sects like the Strangites and the Cutlerites and all of these other folks have polygamy in their waters, too. So these guys aren't breaking over polygamy they actually practice it and put their own spin on it. So it's definitely something that you can't just attribute to Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [00:07:33] Yeah. Okay. And so, Brian, you were saying 25 men were in the know.

Bryan Buchanan [00:07:38] Yeah, 25 men. About 100 women that we know of. That we know of. And that number will expand rapidly after Joseph Smith's death.

John Dehlin [00:07:47] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:07:48] We go to. By the time they leave, it's in the hundreds total. So it bumps up very quickly.

John Dehlin [00:07:55] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:07:56] And that's an interesting point Lindsay mentioned is all of these groups that break off have to deal with it. Whether that means doing it, whether that means denying it, they'll take different routes and it never ends well. For those that do strang, it happens in his group, and it's a very. That's part of what gets him killed. And then the cutlerites will flatly deny that it ever happened in their group later on, even though it did on a very limited scale. So that's. Anyone that goes back to Joseph Smith era Mormonism has to deal with polygamy in one way or another.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:08:28] I would say that everyone who deals with Mormonism today still has to contend with polygamy because it seeps into the doctrine. Like I said, I think it's inherent in the endowment, in a lot of the temple oaths, in the covenants, in the language. It's all built to sort of satisfy these last few years in Nauvoo. And when you look at Mormon theology and development that a lot of, I would say Brighamite sects or, you know, like larger LDS or Mormon movements have, they're taking doctrine that was. That originates in the Nauvoo period. So a lot of that has polygamy infused somewhere in it.

Church Schisms and the Reorganized Church

John Dehlin [00:09:08] And while we're talking about schisms, I guess Emma and Joseph Smith III and others end up creating what originally was known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And I think we mentioned this last episode. Do we want to talk about how they dealt with polygamy?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:09:23] Yeah, we can talk about it a little bit. So that actually doesn't happen until about the 1860s when Joseph Smith III is older. So for a while after the death of Joseph Smith, Emma really gets screwed over basically by Brigham Young and the other church authorities. And this becomes like a two year battle after his death to, you know, see who has charge of the land and different members of the Smith family back. Emma Smith. William Smith kind of changes teams a few times of who he's gonna back.

John Dehlin [00:09:53] That's Joseph's brother, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:09:54] Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. The Smith siblings. Because again, like I said in the last episode, Mormonism was their enterprise. That's how they saw it. It wasn't just the Joseph Smith party. It was the Smith thing. And so they just assumed that they would carry it on after his death. And of course, Brigham Young and others have different plans for that. So after it all shakes out and it doesn't shake in Emma's favor, you know, as far as the bulk, the majority of folks follow Brigham Young. He makes probably the most compelling argument, if you will.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:10:27] And so Emma disappears for a while. She goes away. She abandons Mormonism and just kind of escapes it. She gets remarried. She doesn't really pick it back up until a few years later, but she always believed that her son. And there are some good cases that go all the way back to the Missouri period, that state that her son was supposed to take over for Joseph Smith. So Missouri. Am I right? Is that when the first.

Bryan Buchanan [00:10:56] Liberty jail?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:10:56] Liberty jail, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So their schism is interesting, but their whole doctrine becomes a reaction in a lot of ways to polygamy for a century. So as the Brighamites, anyone who follows Brigham over, the Brighamites sort of develop a polygamous doctrine. They develop an anti polygamous doctrine. And so they still have, you know, a doctrine and covenants that they build on. They still have all of these things, but it goes in a different direction, I would say more mainstream Christian than, you know, what Brigham Young does.

Bryan Buchanan [00:11:32] And one of the interesting figures that's involved in that development is a man named William Marx. And our friend John Dinger is working on a book about him with Sheryl Bruno that will be fascinating because he's during Nauvoo, a very important man, but then gets forgotten later on. And so he tells this slightly different narrative that towards the end of his life, Joseph Smith starts to argue that polygamy is wrong and he's repentant of it, essentially. And that will come out several times. And that's a problem because that's not. Joseph Smith wasn't a polygamist. It was that he was, but then repented of it. And so that will become a narrative for a while until Joseph Smith III can finally squish that out and say, no, no, no, my father was not a polygamist, period.

John Dehlin [00:12:14] I mean, it would make sense that it caused Joseph so much trouble that he would have towards the end, said, I messed up. This got out of hand. Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:12:24] We have a few accounts, Marx being probably the strongest one there are like third hand accounts that claim that Brigham Young had heard or that, you know, John Taylor had heard or whoever that Joseph Smith, you know, said at the very end, I've made a mistake. One account, and I forget who it was, basically has Joseph Smith saying, and I deserve to die for it, right? Like this is my atonement. And that's why I'm turning myself in. We don't know because like a lot of Nauvoo polygamy, there's not a lot of extant sources. But Marx would go on to sort of perpetuate that narrative, which really becomes a popular folk myth, I think, in the reorganization for a long time.

John Dehlin [00:13:06] Okay, all right, so where do we go in terms of the succession crisis next?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:13:12] We get out of Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [00:13:14] That's what we do.

Bryan Buchanan [00:13:15] It's such a fascinating thing because you have to think Joseph Smith could read the writing on the wall, at least at some point beforehand, but yet he really doesn't develop a clear path forward. And during the 70s, Mike Quinn writes this fascinating article where he explores all of the options that were on the table. And he says there are eight possibilities throughout Joseph Smith's life that he put forward at one time or another. And obviously Brigham Young is one, Sidney Rigdon is one, David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, one of the Smith brothers. There's all these different things that are possibilities, but they were never really fleshed out. Even the Brigham Young one isn't. And that's something that most modern LDS Mormons don't realize is that is not something that was as cut and dried and logical as it will later be portrayed.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:14:06] And I think that's important because it wasn't that Joseph Smith died and then Brigham steps up and he's the new guy. No, there's actually a two year period where nobody knows what's going on. Brigham Young and a lot of men who hear news of Joseph Smith's murder in Carthage start making plans right away of what they're going to do in Brigham Young's case. I'm being very reductive here, but he basically says, listen, Sidney Rigdon's a nice guy. He helped Joseph for a long time, but he's a little bonkers now with the head stuff. And he doesn't know the drill. We do as a body, as the quorum of the 12.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:14:42] We have the keys within us, all of us together. So we're going to. No one can replace Joseph. That was the brilliance of his pitch to everybody, was no one can replace them. And we're not going to try. But between us, between all of us guys, maybe we'll make up enough to be like Joseph Smith. And that made sense to a lot of people. They're like, okay, you know, the power Is with the 12. They can bring us to Zion or whatever. And at this point, they're going to go to war. You know, Nauvoo might be going to war with the outsiders.

John Dehlin [00:15:16] So why is that?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:15:18] Because, Thomas Ford, we had talked about this before. So we have the Nauvoo Expositor, which brings, you know, the Mormons destroy a printing press, which leads to the death of Joseph Smith, basically. The death doesn't stop the hatred against the Mormons. It helps in a sense. Like, everyone's like, oh, no, what do we do? But Thomas Ford basically tells the Mormons, listen, you still have to leave. You know, we're not going to exterminate you. We're not going to do what Missouri did. But you got to get out of here because I can't stave off this justice for. Because there's a lot of problems still going on.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:15:53] There was a lot of counterfeiting that Mormons were doing at the time. There were issues of property and land deeds and the Nauvoo militia and the charter and all of this stuff. Stuff was happening. And so the Mormons were still in trouble. And there wasn't a good.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:16:12] They weren't going to stop, basically. And Mormons, some Mormons wanted revenge for Joseph Smith's death. So it was this idea of, like, what are the Mormons going to do now? Are they going to escalate? So Thomas Ford basically negotiates and says, please leave. And so the Mormons are like, we're going to leave. They think that they have more time than they do, but they don't. And they. So the first company, with Brigham Young and several other leaders, get out and start to head west. They have no idea where they're going. It's not like they're like, eh, we're going to Utah. No idea where they're going.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:16:45] They just knew that they had to get out as soon as they could. And that happens in waves. We really call it like the three acts. There's three acts. The first act is, you know, Brigham Young's group going sort of the Camp of Israel is what they call it. They start off as far as the Missouri river, and then the last group are the really poor and disabled and elderly folks or the orphans. They're like stuck there and they get caught in what's called the battle of Nauvoo. Basically, it's an actual battle. There's a cannon brought in that they're firing apostates, sorry, Gentiles, who have now taken over and taken the land from the Mormons are firing cannons at the people.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:17:29] The Mormons that are there do this dance, this cursed ritual dance in the temple where they basically curse the temple and anyone in it, and then they leave writing on the temple, basically saying, come after us, bro. That's like the message. And they're the last, and they end up at the tail end, and it's chaos. Window Quarters is chaos because they weren't prepared. They didn't have enough time. They don't know where they're going. And so what they end up doing. Brigham Young makes a deal with the government to illegally encroach on Omaha land. Omaha. There was a bunch of tribes living there, and Andrew Jackson had negotiated this treaty that said, okay, if we get rid of all the indigenous folks, as far as America goes right now, we'll leave you alone.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:18:14] We promise. This side of the Missouri, you guys are safe. We will leave you alone. We won't encroach on your land. The Mormons go and encroach on the land illegally, and Brigham negotiates a little deal. He says, how about government?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:18:30] If you let us stay here illegally, we will send you some men for the Mormon Battalion. And of course, you know, the Omaha don't really have a say in this. In fact, Indian agents and the tribes that are there. The Potawatomi. Am I saying there? I always say it wrong?

Bryan Buchanan [00:18:47] Potawatomi.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:18:48] Potawati. Potawatomi. The Potawatomi, they complain about Mormon encroachment. They're eating their cattle. They're sorry. They're eating their grass. They're killing off all the resources, and they're breaking all of these treaties. But Brigham was really smart in negotiating with the government. So he has that encampment. And then there are a few behind him that start in major areas are Garden Grove. That's where the poor people were living, Mount Pisgah. And then the place that we know is Winter Quarters, which is. Do you want to talk about that?

The Trek West and Winter Quarters

Bryan Buchanan [00:19:27] So that was the headquarters at the time. So you have all these different little way stations that some people would stay there for longer and get things ready for people coming. But then others were just sort of progressively moving their way until they realized it's not going to happen yet, so we better hole up here.

Bryan Buchanan [00:19:44] And that becomes an interesting place because they had been more or Less moving, but now it's sort of a settlement. And so that's where polygamy starts to happen again. And there's this very interesting statement from Lorenzo. Snorri says, we now felt more free to do these things, but they're still not doing a lot of marriages yet, and it's ugly. And we have. One of the stories that we talked about on the history podcast was Patty Sessions, whose first wife marries Patty more or less without her knowledge. And Patty has a very busy life. She's already trying to run her household, but then she's also a midwife and constantly being called out on cases.

Bryan Buchanan [00:20:26] So this new wife comes into the family, seems to be not really willing to pull her share. And so there's tension there. And her diary is so fascinating because she'll talk about, David went and slept with her last night, and I'm just miserable. And so we get these pictures of how these relationships actually worked in winter quarters in a time where they are very poor and there's a lot of disease, there's a lot of scurvy going around. And then you add the tension of these relationships that they don't really know how to make work.

John Dehlin [00:21:00] Are they intense?

Bryan Buchanan [00:21:02] Mostly intense. Lots of mud. Not very fun at all.

John Dehlin [00:21:07] It's getting cold, right?

Bryan Buchanan [00:21:08] It's very cold. And there are stories of these women will go visit each other. There were the Partridge Sisters, one that had to marry Brigham Young. And her sister comes to see how she's doing, and she says, there's just mud everywhere. And there's this fascinating account or this hilarious account where she says, we're all in the tent. And I think the only reason that we didn't freeze is the frost. Didn't have anywhere to get in because the tent was so full of people. So not a very fun period of time. There are a lot of reasons why winter quarters mostly gets ignored in Mormon history. And that's one of it, is it's just very bleak. It's not a fun time, and it's confusing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:21:47] At one point, there are, like, 60, you know, encampments all strung along across the Missouri. And the grand encampment is Brigham's Vanguard Company. I guess it's the first one that goes out. And then you got to picture it as, like, you know, just this crowd of people. They don't want to be in Nauvoo. Being in Nauvoo is dangerous. People that were staying back in Nauvoo were getting beaten up on the streets. Like, you know, people were hearing about the Mormonites and how terrible they were. And you could go. It was a free for all. You could go, get a shovel and beat an elderly Mormon guy.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:22:21] And that stuff was happening. People didn't want to be there, but Brigham had no idea where they were going. They didn't even know if they could stay there. So he's there first. All these people get crowded in. Brigham gets really pissed at everybody. He was like, everybody stop and slow down. But if you're the guy at the tail end, you don't want to be there. And so they're frustrated, and so they kind of come out in a hurry. They're not well prepared. And you really start to see the economic divide now for Brigham Young being.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:22:50] He's really hard for me, I struggle with him. I will say, at this point, he is living pretty rough like the rest of them. They're living in tents. Eventually, in Nebraska, they built, you know, little lot. They give lots to people and they build some cabins, and it's pretty rudimentary, but it's more like a village. They're farming on land that doesn't belong to them, but they are, you know, trying to set up a little city to make way stations. Garden Grove is the interesting place because in the grand encampment, you have this formal establishment of polygamy. You've got Elizar snow, and there are stories of, like, they actually have cabins, some of them, and they'll spend their nights singing and making, you know, poetry together and doing art and having these things.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:23:35] The further you get away from the grand encampment and you have these poor people, the rougher it gets. And this is where we discovered this story of one of Bill Hickman. Bill Hickman would be a henchman for Brigham Young in the Utah period. He convinces one of his plural wives to run a bawdy house out of her wagon box. Basically like she's running prostitution to other Mormon customers in Garden Grove. And so it's interesting when we think of, like, these pure Mormon pioneers, Garden Grove, the whole branch gets cut off because they're stealing from each other.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:24:12] They're selling sex to survive. They are. There's a lot of fights and abuse, but they're poor, they don't have resources, and they had to get out at the last minute. And so it's a really tough spot. So this is kind of all the stuff that's happening in winter quarters. It's more wild than people think.

Fate of Joseph Smith's Plural Wives

John Dehlin [00:24:33] For those who follow your podcast, this goes without saying, but what happened to Joseph's 30 to 40 wives right plural wives. I mean, I guess a lot of them. Many of them were already married to men. But I'm just. Do you guys want to just let our never Mormon listeners and viewers know what happened to them?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:24:51] Yeah. So after his death, that was. There was the question of what to do with a lot of Joseph Smith's stuff, including his wives. And I hate to be so, you know, coarse about it, but that's what it was. And so several men step up to say, you know, they can be sealed to me. And Brigham Young is one of them. Heber, Kimball and Amasa, that's another. How do you say it?

Bryan Buchanan [00:25:14] The descendants usually go for amas or amnesi.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:25:17] I can't say words right at all. So those three are basically the three that say, we'll be the guys. You can be sealed to us. Most people choose Brigham or Heber. I think one chooses Amasa. Is that right?

Bryan Buchanan [00:25:30] One of the Partridge Sisters, Eliza, marries him.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:25:33] Yeah. And the ones that rolled the dice on Heber would live to regret that. But Brigham, basically, they all marry his apostles. They get sealed for time only as plural wives, which means they're under their charge. Brigham Young has children with a few of them. Eliza R. Snow is one that he inherited. They never have children. Heber, I don't know. We'll talk about Heber. Being married to Heber is a rough gig.

Bryan Buchanan [00:26:02] The polyandrous ones were very interesting because there are a couple ways that relationships go. There's one Patty Sessions, for one stays with her husband and. And solely doesn't marry anyone else. But then others like.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:18] But her husband takes on.

Bryan Buchanan [00:26:19] Then he marries other women. So it's.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:22] And she hates it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:26:23] She's not a fan. But then, for example, you have someone like Zina Huntington, who is still nominally married to her first legal husband, but then marries Brigham Young and is sealed to Joseph Smith by proxy. And it's pretty clear that her first husband is getting pushed out of the way. He goes on a mission to the east, comes back, he's with W.W. phelps, and unauthorized polygamy happens on the trip back. That's ugly. And then he gets back to town to realize, ah, my wife is now completely with Brigham Young. So those polyandrus ones are rough.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:26:58] And we didn't even talk about this in the last episode, but the women that were involved in polygamy, the secret polygamy, were really heavily involved in the women's organizations, including the Relief Society. And it takes a break during this time because, first of all, it's hard to organize. Second of All Emma was in charge, and Brigham has a conflict with Emma. And so the women are meeting in sort of like these informal gatherings and tents and things like that. But it would be the women who are the plural wives mostly. And they're still trying to care for the poor and the needy, but it's really hard because they don't have a lot of resources themselves.

John Dehlin [00:27:36] You talked about authorization by the end. Was Joseph the one that was always saying, who got to marry? Who did that get pretty solidified?

Bryan Buchanan [00:27:45] Pretty much, yeah. That authority doesn't get very far away from him during his life. And even during the rest of Nauvoo, it's pretty close to Brigham Young. He's got a tight grasp on it. It's only once they move out of Nauvoo that it starts to get messy because the people are spread out, and that tends to spread the authority out, even if Brigham doesn't want it to. And so the Henry Jacobs case, who's Mary designer Huntington, is fascinating because they're coming back and they just feel like they can perform marriages. And W.W. phelps does that and gets himself yelled at and excommunicated. And so as they start to move west for a time, that authority branches out. And Brigham is not happy about that. And that's a long, ongoing process to gather that authority back in and get it under his control.

John Dehlin [00:28:34] So what does Brigham yell? How does Brigham want polygamy authorization to happen?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:28:38] He doesn't know yet. And you can see this in the case of a guy named James Emmett. So there are two guys that are in leadership, and they're in the Council 50. George Miller is a bishop. James Emmett is a leader. Was he an apostle? What was his role? He was just Council 50. So these are two guys. James Emmett is like a really hardened frontiersman, and he connections with the indigenous people. So he was an asset to the. To the 12.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:29:05] George Miller has his own, like, messy foray with polygamy. James Emmet, before they. Even before the Mormons leave Nauvoo, decides to take an advance party of 100 people out to find a spot to camp. And he basically turns it into a frontier sex cult. He starts ordering everyone to give their wives to him. He's going to be in charge of all of them. He makes them give all of their property to him. A bunch of women escape back to Nauvoo barefoot, and they're mostly elderly women saying, this guy's gone off the rails. Brigham Young has a choice here. What do I do? He does nothing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:29:45] He convinces James Emmett to get out. And they're in the wilderness for like six months or something. They're like out there for a while having this crazy polygamy sex cult. And they come back, Brigham Young forgives them. He's like, don't do that again.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:29:59] James Emmet, George Miller go off into the Ponca settlement. They do it again. And of course, Brigham Young doesn't do anything. Eventually he gets cut off from the church. But you can see that Brigham is not confident in his power right now. He has to keep people together and he has to convince them that he's still the guy. Because at this point, it's still kind of messy and you have options. George Miller leaves. You can follow George Miller, you can follow Lyman White to Texas. And some people do. And so Brigham Young is trying to be very careful and not make too many enemies at this time.

John Dehlin [00:30:30] But eventually he wants to be the guy making the decisions. And I only ask that because that was one of the things that just seemed so wrong about Warren Jeffs, is that he was just assigning women as sort of his power. His favorites, his power structure, his nepotism, his cronyism. Does that make sense?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:30:48] Brigham Young will definitely get there, especially during the Mormon Reformation. But it's in the 1850s that you have Brigham Young officially, like, voted in as a prophet, seer and revelator. But not at first. He. He wasn't at first. In fact, people still in his own leadership thought that they could challenge him. They didn't think that he knew all the things. And we actually argue in our podcast, and I think this is true, that Brigham Young, the reason the route he takes to Utah and the reason why he settles in Utah is to show people, trust me, I'm the guy. Because we talked about the Boston, Massachusetts breakoff group earlier, the Smash Brothers, we call them.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:31:26] It's William Smith, you know, Joseph Smith's unruly brother, and Sam Brannan and a few others. Sam Brannan was a man that was respected, had a lot of power, very charismatic. He goes ahead of winter quarters to California. He beats the Mormons in Utah by two months. In California, on behest of Brigham Young, they travel by boat. He takes 100 Mormons out there and. And he is trying to get the Mormons to come to California, and he eventually has a conflict with Brigham. But at this point, Sam Brannan thinks that he's acting with the power of the 12. He doesn't think that Brigham Young is this power hungry guy.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:32:01] He'll find out pretty soon that he's wrong. But like I said, I guess I just bring that up to say it's a messy time. So Brigham Young isn't messing with the Authority too much. He is allowing ceilings a little bit, but again, they've got bigger fish to fry as far as, like, you know, who is going to eat what and who's going to live where.

Counterfeiting and Dissent in Winter Quarters

John Dehlin [00:32:21] Okay. Now, Lindsay, you mentioned counterfeiting at one point. Bryan, is there anything else you want to mention about counterfeiting in Winter Quarters?

Bryan Buchanan [00:32:30] Yeah. And this is the shadow that follows them from Nauvoo. And this is some really interesting research that our friend Marianne Clements has been putting together that the traditional narrative is that Mormons end up leaving Nauvoo early because these counterfeiting indictments come down against Brigham Young and some of the other leaders. She's arguing that it's actually very different. What happens is you have these organized counterfeiting rings that are operating in Nauvoo, maybe with some knowledge by church leaders. It's not quite clear on that. What happens is one of these people,

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:33:02] Brigham thing, Brigham Young knew well, that's they have a guy, Brigham Young is. There's a warrant out for his arrest, and they have a guy dress as Brigham Young in the temple, in the Nauvoo Temple and pretend to be Brigham Young and get arrested. And they, like, all laughed about it forever. So the leaders knew about it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:33:20] Well, the question is how much were they involved with it, though?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:33:22] Sure.

Bryan Buchanan [00:33:23] So what she's arguing is that what happens is one of the guys that's involved in these counterfeiting rings starts ratting out the other guys, and the other guys use these indictments as a way to punish this guy. And the move up of the Exodus is just simply fallout because of that. And so she's arguing that traditional narrative of how counterfeiting plays into the end of Nauvoo is actually probably a little different than that. So what happens is that never really gets resolved. And so that follows them through to Winter Quarters and the Garden Grove settlement that we mentioned. They have a couple bogus presses that are buried there. And so there's a lot of shadiness that's going on. That because it's never brought out into the open and dealt with in a solid resolution, it just keeps happening.

John Dehlin [00:34:11] You reminded me of an episode I did with Kathleen Melanakis, who talked about early Mormon counterfeiting kind of before Joseph Smith and maybe during. So that, you know, if people want to check that out, those allegations or practices actually go start appearing early in The Smith family with Joseph's what, parents and grandparents. Is that right?

Bryan Buchanan [00:34:36] Yeah, there are. It's hard because she's on the one hand, sort of the trailblazer there. She's the first one that's really writing about it.

John Dehlin [00:34:43] There's a lot of work to do.

Bryan Buchanan [00:34:44] There's some more work to do. There are some issues with some of her research, but she's, you know, anytime you're the first one to write about it, that's the hardest because you don't have anything to rely on really.

John Dehlin [00:34:55] Brian's such a kind guy, isn't he?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:34:57] He is.

Bryan Buchanan [00:34:58] Marianne.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:34:59] Annie's a smart guy.

Bryan Buchanan [00:35:00] We were a little too. I was a little too hard on her when we talked about this and Marianne pushed back and says, no, no, no, no, no. Be n I tried to listen.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:35:09] We each have our favorites with historians that we really trust and sometimes we disagree on, folks. But yeah, I would say Marianne Clements, who's writing on this really good stuff.

John Dehlin [00:35:21] Thumbs up.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:35:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:22] Okay. Okay. Anything else we want to say about winter quarters? I guess there's secret polygamy and women who go rogue. Did we cover those?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:35:32] Oh, yeah. So that's something that we found in the research. I was doing an episode on the women of the Mormon Battalion, the women who are sort of left behind. And I found this curious entry. And so this is my challenge. This is what I was going to tell Julia. Like, Julia, if you're looking for something to write on or publish on, we need someone to look into this. Found an account of nine women who, when their husbands leave for the battalion, you know, these are nine women that are staying back, like many women in the battalion that had to stay back. And they pretty soon learn about the secret polygamy and they are not having it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:36:05] And they're like, the church is going in the wrong direction. We don't like this. But now we're stuck out here. What do we do? We can't go back. We don't have enough supplies to go back. So we're going to go forward. They organize a little wagon company with one of the 17 year old sons of one of the women leads them. He becomes their trail guide and they follow.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:36:28] Is it the Missouri river or the Mississippi? I think the Missouri river, like as far as they can to a place that they settle called Plum Creek. And they. They leave the church because of polygamy and they live on their own for two years. Their husbands are gone. There's no male going back and forth this time. So their husbands don't even know that they're gone. And they get back finally from the battalion and realize that their wives aren't there waiting for them. And they eventually find them, and they all leave the church together and settle on this little encampment. But I just think it's really cool.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:36:58] We'd never hear about the people that said no to it. And here are these nine women. To be nine women on the frontier with all your kids and to settle out on this. In this wilderness, which is, you know, Indian country, it's dangerous. The place that they. That they settle has a lot of warring between the Sioux and other. Other tribes. And so it's a dangerous place to be. And they. They survive. I think it's kind of cool, fun. So we need more about that.

John Dehlin [00:37:28] Okay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:37:28] Someone. Someone researched that.

John Dehlin [00:37:30] Okay. Okay. And just overall, polygamy is still. It's not broadly known amongst the membership, just amongst the elite, even in winter quarters. Is that right?

Bryan Buchanan [00:37:41] The secret is definitely getting out, but the amount of marriages that are actually happening are not a lot. For a lot of things. Brigham Young is. Is trying to put the brakes on until they can get somewhere permanent. And that applies to a lot of things. There's not a lot, you know, while Nauvoo, they had really ramped up temple ordinances, for example, in winter quarters, that pretty much grinds to a halt. So it's. A lot of things are put on pause until they get somewhere. Their permanent settlement, wherever that might be.

Early Utah Settlement and Going Public with Polygamy

John Dehlin [00:38:10] Yeah. I just have to say I mentioned this last episode. I'm reading Barbara Jones Brown and Rick Turley's book, second book. Well, on. On Mountain Meadows Massacre. And I. I'm seeing just how. Just crazy Brigham Young is acting, you know, once, you know, during the time of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Clearly, this Nauvoo and Winners quarter trauma has to be informing Brigham Young's later crazy behavior before and after and during the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:38:46] Oh, yeah. I think he's insecure in his power, and following Joseph is a tough act because they were very different people. And, you know, just in the case of Martha Bretherton, that's a great example that we talked about last time. I love that he was denied so hardcore and, like, publicly humiliated. But what we don't realize is with another one of his plural wives, Augusta Adams Cobb.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:39:10] Am I getting the right one with the trial in Massachusetts? Yeah. So he has this very embarrassing. It's an adultery scandal because, you know, people aren't recognizing polygamy at this time. This is pre winter quarters. And so he has to Go and have his name dragged in the Massachusetts press, which mattered to him because that's, you know, his home turf. And he's painted as this terrible person. And a lot of people, including Conal o', Donovan, who I think is a great researcher, believes that Brigham Young's racism and his ideas on miscegenation come from this humiliation. Because here you've got William Smith or Joseph T. Ball, who might be, you know, a black man in Boston collecting wives, and Brigham can't get anyone to marry him, and yet if he does, he's embarrassed and humiliated.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:40:01] So you see, in all Mormon doctrine, really, Mormon theology is developed. I hate to say this, I'm sorry to the faithful, but it's out of the insecurities of the men in charge. That's what it is. It's a response to that. And Brigham Young is such a great case for that. And especially in winter quarters, he's really insecure about his power. And you see that in the decisions he's making.

Bryan Buchanan [00:40:26] Couple of thoughts on that line. One of the things that he has to deal with is the fact, and part of the reason that he doesn't act more strongly with some of these guys is they do have commissions that go back to Joseph Smith, James Emmet, Lyman White. A lot of these guys were commissioned by Joseph Smith to do certain things. And so Brigham, on the one hand, loves Joseph Smith and wants to uphold his legacy as much as anyone else. But you can see sometimes he gets pushed a little too much and he has to say, now, hold on, I'm my own guy. And that's a theme that we'll see happen throughout the history of polygamy is what happens after a change of leadership.

Bryan Buchanan [00:41:00] What happens when the previous guy authorized something or winked at something, or they think he winked at something. But now the new guy's here. How does he deal with those previous commissions? That's a very important part of this history that gets overlooked. And that's part of Brigham Young's challenge. What to do with these Joseph Smith era commissions. To do certain things.

John Dehlin [00:41:23] That all sounds really important. And I just also want to note just kind of the obvious, that they got ran out of Nauvoo, I guess, ran out of Kirtland, ran out of Nauvoo. Now they got run out of, not, sorry, Kirtland, Missouri, and then Nauvoo. He's like in charge of all these people. They're pretty much refugees, like, living in tents on the frontier. He's got to feel so much pressure and so much anger. For the way the government has handled it, allowed this to happen. He, he must leave, arrive at winter quarters and arrive in Utah, very bitter and very angry about the government's treatment and about how the Mormon people were treated. That's probably pretty obvious.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:42:08] But I mean, at this point and throughout all of Nauvoo, they're sending, they're sending emissaries to Washington. And one of, one of these guys that he, he sends several men on a mission to Washington D.C. and they make friends with a guy named Thomas Kane. Thomas Kane is a non Mormon who becomes an ally for Mormons up into the massacre period.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:42:31] He's really one of the few people who is sympathetic to the Mormon plight. In fact, if you read his book, among the Mormons, the Mormons, the Mormons, he gives the most sympathetic, heart wrenching view of Nauvoo as its being abandoned. And he was able to like, because I get cynical because these are my ancestors and I'm like, you guys read the room. You're just making all the choices. Like, of course people are responding this way. You're taking up all the power, you're being dishonest, you're doing all these things. Thomas Kane makes me go, oh, these poor, like it's, it's the leaders making the poor choices.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:43:06] It's all of the rest of the people that are paying the price for it. And Thomas Kane really gives you a sympathetic, if you want a sympathetic look at Mormons and Nauvoos are leaving. Read his, his accounts.

Bryan Buchanan [00:43:17] All the skills of John C. Bennett. None of the messiness.

John Dehlin [00:43:23] I love it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:43:24] No tomatoes either though. Unfortunately, there are downsides.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:43:27] He was tiny though.

Bryan Buchanan [00:43:28] Like John, he was a little guy,

John Dehlin [00:43:30] but he appears in Brown and Turley's book quite a bit, so it's been fun.

Bryan Buchanan [00:43:35] He was very, very helpful to them at many points along the way.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:43:39] That's why we, I mean, we named a county after him.

Bryan Buchanan [00:43:43] Winter quarters is Kanesville for a while. So, yeah, they were very fond of him and rightly so.

John Dehlin [00:43:48] Yeah. Okay. All right. So are we leaving winter's quarters finally? Yeah, finally. Okay, so they were there how long?

Bryan Buchanan [00:43:57] Well, so depends on who you are.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:43:59] That's right. Depends on who you are and where you go. The vanguard finally leaves at the end of 1846 into 1847. And they have a few false starts, but basically it plays into the battalion. The battalion is sent forward. So they actually Mormon men in the battalion, the 500 men that are sort of the payment for rent on this land, make it to California first and then they come back. And of course, that's a really interesting story, too. And we have to look at the Mormon migration as it becomes its own economy.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:44:32] As Mormons go, they're unique in the sense that they sort of take advantage of this opportunity. They set up outposts and way stations, because up until this point, it really is unexplored land. There are Spanish missions that exist from the, you know, Spanish invasion. That's been happening for centuries in the Americas. But there's really very few things. There's Fort Bridger, that's way out there, that's owned by fur trappers and explorers, but we don't really have any government outposts. So the Mormons are going. At the same time, the government is starting to realize, hey, California might be something right now, it's Mexico.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:45:10] And as soon as the Mormons get there, the Mormons settle in Utah and it's Mexico. When they get there, it doesn't stay in Mexico for very long. It's about a year that the Mormons are in Mexico, and then it, you know, becomes purchased off of slave money by the United States from Mexico. And then it becomes. Then we get into the territorial struggle. But when the Mormons are going across, Brigham has no idea where he's going, and he doesn't know for a long time. And there's a lot of disagreement within his own church. That's why George Miller and James Emmett start to disagree. They're like, this guy doesn't know what he's doing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:45:44] Sam Brannan, of course, thinks California is a place. I really agree. I wish we would have settled in the Yerba Buena in San Diego. Warmer. But Brigham Young finally makes it. The vanguard's very interesting. A lot of interesting things happen.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:46:00] And then they get to Utah and the famous this is the right place happens. Brigham is sick. He. The first year in Utah is really, really rough. They go about setting up farms for the next wave of people right away. So that was their. The first year is really set up to do that. But after that, the Mormons start thinking about power. How are we going to live here? How are we going to maintain this land that we have now, you know, displaced all these Utes from. And how are we going to maintain that power? And so that's where we get into the Utah period.

John Dehlin [00:46:39] So were Utes like living in the Salt Lake, what is now Salt Lake City, Salt Lake county, where they living in this valley?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:46:45] So when Mormons get to the area, there are several tribes. So they had actually met Jim Bridger Jim Bridger is not a friend to Mormons. At first, he's very polite, but pretty soon the Mormons will turn on him. But Jim Bridger says, hey, I think you shouldn't go in the Salt Lake Valley. There's too many Utes there. If you go a little further south by Utah Lake, there's water. You know, the Utes are friendlier there. You know, he gives him some good advice that Brigham Young doesn't follow at first. So up in the north part of where the Mormons settle, you've got Shoshone, and then you've got the Utes in the main valley of Utah, Salt Lake Valley.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:47:22] And you've got different bands of Utes. Like, there are different names. The Paiutes, the Pavonts, the Paiutes, Timpanogos, we originally thought were Utes, but we think are Shoshone. There's some debate of who they belong to. And then you've got the Go Shoots and the Navajo and the Arapaho up by Wyoming. So there are these different tribes that are all kind of intermarried or interrelated. A lot of them speak numic, religion or language. And so the Mormons get there, and they contend with the Utes first and foremost. Some of the big Ute chiefs, like Wakara. So Wakara is one of the first chiefs that the Mormons start to negotiate with early on.

John Dehlin [00:48:05] Okay. All right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:48:06] And polygamy factors into that as well.

John Dehlin [00:48:11] So you mention Orson Pratt and the Seer going public.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:48:18] Okay. So in 1850, the Mormons petitioned to have Utah, the state of Deseret. Sorry, the area become a territory. And they propose Deseret, which is huge. It's like, how would you explain it? Oregon, Nevada.

Bryan Buchanan [00:48:34] So you get basically all of Nevada, parts of California, parts of Idaho, parts of Colorado. Yeah, it's this massive. Brigham Young has a grand vision of what's going to happen, because basically what it is, it's from where they settle, it's this whole network to the sea. And they want to control that whole way there. Oops. And so they want to make sure they've got a handle on all of that. And the government's like, that's nice. Maybe not quite that much. And so when the territory is finally organized, it gets chopped down considerably and then gets whittled down more over the years.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:49:08] So 1850, they petitioned for this. And earlier, when Sam Brannan goes to California, he's there at Sutter's Fort when they discover gold. Not long after the Mormons arrive in Utah. So the gold rush begins, which means the Mormons. The Mormons are in the middle of the United States now. They're the way station to this gold rush. And a lot of traffic are going to come in. A lot of people, a lot of money, a lot of power for the Mormons. So they petition for this territory. The government says too big. They cut it down.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:49:36] Brigham Young is made territorial governor, which is a term of four years, which he makes almost two terms. Kicked out in 1857. But his first term, he gets, you know, a little full of himself. He puts his own guys in the territorial legislature. And they. In 1852, they decide in a civic meeting that they're going to go public with polygamy. And this is where Orson Pratt comes in. Orson Pratt, the great publisher, the great scientist of Mormonism, publishes a pamphlet called the Seer. They get really excited, and they announce it to the world. Yes, we are polygamists, and you can, too. It's a great doctrine.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:50:17] It's the right doctrine. This is where you get all those terrible quotes from Heber and Brigham about, you know, monogamy being a sin and a curse, and, you know, monogamous babies are uglier than polygamous babies, and ancient Rome fell because they were monogamous and all of these crazy quotes. And Orson Pratt goes to Washington, D.C. to share the good news, and it doesn't go so well for the Mormon.

Bryan Buchanan [00:50:42] And this is just probably the first major time where Mormon leaders in Salt Lake refuse to read the room. They've got John Bernheisel back in Washington as the delegate to Congress, and he is, on the one hand, a much more cultured man than Brigham Heber. A lot of these guys, he's much better educated, but he's also very pragmatic. And he knows that if Mormons want statehood, if Mormons want anything done, they've got to be more strategic about it. Step number one there is shut up about polygamy. And this is one of my favorite moments of this. He writes back to Salt Lake and says, guys, you're trying to petition for this.

Bryan Buchanan [00:51:23] Can you shut up about polygamy for just a little while? And there is a register of letters received, and there's a check mark by it. And it's eight days later that Orson Pratt stands up in August 1852 and announces polygamy to the world. While John Bernheisel is going balder back in Washington, D.C. pulling his hair out really quickly.

Missionaries, Deception, and Polygamy in Europe

John Dehlin [00:51:47] One of the really disturbing things I Remember, reading is how the missionaries, Mormon missionaries, were sent to Europe or England. And I guess people are asking questions, and so they're. Do you guys want to tell that story? You're both nodding all the time.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:52:02] Yeah, no, I was just going to bring this up. That's why I'm nodding.

John Dehlin [00:52:05] Is the story you're about to tell before?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:52:07] No, it's this. It's this time period. So before. So Mormons are going to England really early in church history. Mormon church leaders, apostles have all been to England on a mission, and they're having great success. And we're having huge waves of European immigrants, mostly English immigrants at this point that are coming over. They're really excited. There had been rumors of polygamy, but, you know, they were denying them. When this 1852 thing comes out and it gets published and it's undeniable, you have missionary work gets cut in half. You have a bunch of people who have suffered and been persecuted in England, go, wait a minute.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:52:49] What? This whole thing that you've said isn't true is true. And you have a lot of people that leave the church, but you have a lot of people who are stuck now who are either on their way over or start to be on their way over. The church institutes pretty early on the pf, the Perpetual Immigration Fund, which basically says, we'll pay your way over, but then you're indebted to us. So a lot of people are on that plan and they're stuck. And it's a really tragic moment where you have women in England, whole congregations crying, wait, polygamy is true.

Bryan Buchanan [00:53:23] What?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:53:23] This is real. And there was a sense of betrayal. And so a lot of people. And polygamy turns out is not a good missionary tool. And it really kills missionary work. And you don't see missionary work turn around until the third manifesto, basically, second and third manifesto, when the church, finally, the LDS Church finally kicks it to the curb, that missionary work ramps up again because people are not converting, in spite of Heber Kimball's great literature that it's such a great thing for the human race.

John Dehlin [00:53:58] So who are the missionaries that were practicing polygamy but telling people back in England that there was no polygamy?

Bryan Buchanan [00:54:07] Carly Pratt Taylor is the very interesting one, because John Taylor iii, Prophet Hebert

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:54:13] Kimball, I mean, like, most of them went to Brigham, went to mission. I don't know if he was polygamous at the time, because this is 1830.

Bryan Buchanan [00:54:19] Not until he comes back.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:54:20] Yeah, yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:54:21] But John Taylor will. In print. There's a debate While he's in France and he's debating the tenets of Mormonism, he will say in print flatly, we do not practice polygamy. He had 15 wives at the time, around what years? So this is 1853 that he does this.

John Dehlin [00:54:37] This is after.

Bryan Buchanan [00:54:38] I mean, it's a very bifurcated system, because in America, you have this widespread PR campaign. This is why Pratt is sent to Washington, D.C. is part of this PR campaign. But then in Europe, it's radio silence. So later on, there's this. In her memoir, this British woman talks about how this girl comes to her with her tears in her eyes and says, is it true that Brigham Young has 90 wives? And so that's what's happening, is these people are hearing these rumors, but at the same time, the leaders there in Europe are still denying that it happened. Which, I mean, you can. On one hand, you can see why they're doing it, but on the other hand, it's.

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:16] It is very detrimental to their cause, and it will get better towards the end of the century. But for a while there, Europe is rough, whereas it had been this hotbed of missionary activity and conversion before.

John Dehlin [00:55:30] I know historians aren't in the business of trying to understand people's motives or even assessing someone's character, but that seems particularly dark and egregious for the third prophet, president of the Mormon Church, John Taylor, to be actively practicing polygamy. Very actively. How many wives?

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:50] Fifteen at that point.

John Dehlin [00:55:51] Fifteen wives. And he's a missionary telling all the people who are inquiring that no polygamy is going on. Do you have. Do we have any indication how he justified that in his own mind?

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:56:04] Yeah, we have it in our scriptures. When you have this story of Nephi cutting off the head of Laban, what we learn is that the good guy, Nephi, who cuts off the head of a guy to get a record because the ends justify the means, that sometimes you gotta do some bad things and get your hands dirty for the good work. And you have these leaders, and they understand this. They did this public, private thing in Nauvoo. Some of them go, oh, I see. The world isn't ready for sacred doctrine. And so we'll give them the milk before the meat. And this becomes a pattern for John Taylor for a long, long time.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:56:41] This is not going to be the only time he tells the public one thing and does something else privately. It becomes a test. It becomes a higher law is what they call it. So, you know, maybe these converts in England don't understand it yet, and that's okay, because they're kind of wicked. They haven't been brought over to the real side yet.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:57:02] And this is still an idea that exists in fundamentalism, which is most of the conversions into fundamentalist polygamy are from the LDS people. They believe that we're the milk that can't handle the meat. The meat is the higher law. We're lower law. And this is what justifies a lot of the lying. It becomes a sacred versus secret.

John Dehlin [00:57:22] I mean, I guess I just answered the question in my own mind. Joseph Smith lied about it until his death. So why wouldn't Brigham Young and John Taylor and others just feel okay lying about it if Joseph was the prophet? I mean, that's pretty obvious.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:57:35] One of the most cancerous parts of our culture is the idea that you can lie for the Lord. And we come up with a lot of names for it. But it is in the scriptures that sometimes you have to do hard, terrible things for God. And that is going to be a idea that haunts our culture to this day. There are still people that believe that God's law trumps man's law. And you get that straight up from Joseph Smith, who did this many times, and not just with polygamy. You see this with his military actions. Sometimes the man's law is wicked and God's law is better. And that's exactly how they saw polygamy.

Bryan Buchanan [00:58:14] I think part of it is that distinction between the lesser laws and the higher laws. And the thought was that Zion is where the higher laws are. So in addition to plural marriage, they aren't talking a lot about temple things. And the thought was, you learn, the missionaries give you the start, you come, you gather to Zion. That's a big part of it, is the doctrine of the gathering. You get here, then you're introduced to these higher laws. The problem is, then you have, going forward, you'll have a lot of Scandinavian immigrants, for example, who arrive here, have never heard of polygamy. And these women, within a year or two, are now married as the fourth wife, almost without knowing what's going on.

Bryan Buchanan [00:58:51] And that leads to a lot of problems, obviously, because you have not only these cultural barriers, but you have language barriers. And so there are some very rough stories of these women who end up in plural marriages that they were really not anticipating when they came here.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:59:09] And we have to remember 1850s Utah, we do not have the railroad yet. We don't have the telegraph yet. We don't have a lot of things. There are no mail routes in the early 1850s, the Pony Express doesn't happen until a little bit later. So people will get here, many of them on the pef, on borrowed money, and then they're stuck here. And I don't think modern people can understand the isolation that we're talking about. Your best bet, if you got here to Utah and you changed your mind, was to beg a federal soldier to get you out. And in the 1850s, we actually have many examples of that happening.

Lindsay Hansen Park [00:59:48] Mass exoduses, hundreds of people begging, soldiers. Oftentimes they are women trying to get out, but they're men, too. And this is where we, you know, get a lot of the Danite activity. The Mormon Reformation stems from this parish potter murders. All of this stuff where people that are. They get here and they're like, this is not what I signed up for. This is not what I was told. And you have apostates. You know, several people that believed in Mormonism get here and they're like, wait a minute. This isn't cool. And they want to leave. And they'll say the perpetual immigration fund is a way to entrap people, that it's a scam.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:00:24] It's a way to keep people stuck here. And, you know, Brigham Young is experimenting with these ideas of consecration and united order for, you know, most of his tenure. And those are also ways to keep people there. Early Mormons in Deseret tried to start their own language, their own money system, and it becomes like company scrip. Like, if you've ever heard of the coal mining situations where people were paid in scrip, it kept them in poverty, and it kept them loyal to their companies, which means you weren't getting paid regular American dollars, you were getting paid scrip. Well, we had tithing scrip. A lot of the interchange in commerce in early Utah was tithing scrip and all of the stores.

Brigham Young's Control Over Resources and Trade

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:01:07] Brigham Young controlled all the trade routes. He deliberately puts his homes by City Creek. He controls the water, he controls the trails. He has spies everywhere. He has men on outposts. He has power. So if you disagree with him, you're in real trouble. And these people that would leave in, you know, in the dark of night or in groups, they would be raided. They would. All of their stuff would be stolen. And there are stories of people showing up to Fort Laramie or whatever with no shoes, starving and crying and bloody feet because the Mormons have come. And Brigham Young said it over the pulpit several times, you can leave, but we're taking all your stuff.

John Dehlin [01:01:52] Recently when all this Operation Underground Railroad Tim Ballard stuff and just all of Utah was lit up with sex trafficking talk. I had Julia. I remember my reading of the Nauvoo Expositor and how William Law's concerns with Joseph almost sounded like trafficking. From the sense of missionaries going to Europe, bringing young women over and then almost parceling them out as property. I know that presentism to sort of take a term like trafficking and then project it back. Do you think that's going too far to say that this feels like trafficking of women for sexual reasons or is that overstretching?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:02:40] I think women were trafficked all the time in the west they wouldn't have called it that. But often women that were widowed or orphaned were trafficked into prostitution. That was one of the few ways women in the frontier could survive. Women couldn't own property. They didn't have a lot of power outside of the men in their life. And that was sort of Mormons reaction. There becomes this discourse always mirroring prostitution and polygamy. The church leaders are saying our women could be like that, they could be like prostitutes or whores, but we take care of our women, right? We're better than that. We marry them. But women in polygamy, especially women that are leaving with the soldiers, are saying it's a whorehouse.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:03:19] And we'll talk about some examples of this. You do have women who. And especially the handcart companies. This is a good example. The most vulnerable women in the Willie handcart company, for example, are young and orphaned because a lot of the men die. A lot of the men are the ones in the Sweetwater river going, you know, and freezing to death and dying. And so it leaves a lot of orphaned girls and a lot of widows. So they come in and someone, I forget who it was. Some, maybe it was. Conal o' Donovan did a really good study on the marriage rates of those women that came over really young girls.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:03:59] Woodruff, Wilford Woodruff gets one of his really young 13 or 14 year old brides from the handcart company. And that one's controversial because she has a baby soon after. And so the common understanding was Wilford Woodruff like married this 13 or 14 year old girl, her age is kind of disputed and then gets her pregnant. But I actually think that on this particular case she was probably already pregnant by who knows who along the trail. And Woodruff married her as, you know, to cover that up. But it doesn't change the fact that these women, like Brian said Scandinavian women, especially women that didn't speak English, were particularly vulnerable.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:04:40] A lot of the stories in early Utah, you'll hear them, they'll come over, they'll arrive in Salt Lake City, they'll be placed as a maid in someone's house to work off their perpetual immigration debts. And pretty soon they're offered to be a third or fourth or fifth or 16th wife to someone. And the people around them are like, you got a good one. You got John D. Lee, Take him. You know, he's a man of prominence or status. And this happens to many women, and this is how the women get carted off. And as we get into the Mormon Reformation, that's really when the marriages ramp up.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:05:13] But yeah, I actually, you know, this presentism thing is interesting because every time people use that, we're still going off our limited, you know, comparison to the past. Human nature is human nature. And again, I like to remind people that there were still laws that existed, there were still things that made these things considered bad, which is why the Mormons were in so much trouble. So when people were like, it was different. Everybody just married 14 year olds then. That is not true. There has been. Great Scott Barrett sent me this great study the other day on Civil War marriages. The Civil War kills off a lot of men.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:05:50] A lot of men, and leaves this vacuum for women on the East Coast. And meanwhile, you have all these men coming, minors and stuff, coming to the west coast, and it's all men. So there were these gender imbalances in the country, and Utah is creating its own with polygamy, but the average age is still like 21 for women and 26 for men. And this is in spite of all of those barriers. So this idea that, like, it's cool to marry a 13 year old, it wasn't cool. And we know it's not cool because you see discourses between the elders talking about this isn't cool. When John D.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:06:28] Lee marries Ann Gorge, one of his youngest wives, family places her as old as 17. She says she was 13 when she was married to him. People in Salt Lake disapproved of their marriage. As they're going through, they're like, why is he with this young girl?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:06:44] That's not presentism. People saw it as bad, and they also understood that it was a frontier and people didn't have resources. So, yeah, I think girls were trafficked here. Boys were trafficked too. Men were trafficked as laborers and tricked into. When you're, when you're brought somewhere with the promise of one thing and given something else, what would you call that?

John Dehlin [01:07:10] No. All right, well, that's important stuff. So all Right. So Orson Pratt is making his noise in 1852. Does he end up withdrawing or retracting that? Is he told to be quiet, like do the crow? Or is that the outing? Is that the big outing of polygamy? And by the way, the Doctrine and Covenants still had section 101 at the time. Right?

Bryan Buchanan [01:07:39] Right. We're still 25 years away from it going in. Brigham will tell him to shut up, because that was one of his favorite things to do. But it was almost more of a Brigham Orson conflict than it was talking about polygamy, necessarily, because Brigham is constantly talking about, as are most of the other leaders through this period.

Bryan Buchanan [01:08:01] And so what happens is Washington is getting increasingly nervous about this important way station to the gold fields and Oregon and the west that's so important. And so they are trying to exert more federal influence here. And so there are federal appointees that will come to Salt Lake that are duly appointed and get here.

Bryan Buchanan [01:08:21] Brigham doesn't want to deal with them. And they are. And importantly, they're bringing money with them, federal funds that are badly needed. This is a desert economy. They're struggling, and they really need that money. And all they need to do is to cooperate with the duly appointed federal officials. But they hate them, and they will not cooperate. And it gets so bad that a group of them that will be known as the runaway officials just leave, and they're like, I'm not dealing with this. This is awful. And say that they go back east and tell how awful they have been treated. And this just ramps up the pressure more.

Bryan Buchanan [01:08:57] All the while, men like John Bernheisel who are back there trying to smooth things over are saying, guys, you can't do this. You can't just do whatever you want out there. This isn't going to work. And so we see as the 1850s go along, this pot that's boiling in Utah just keeps going. And along the way, we have other things like drought and cricket infestations and all these other things that are making it really, really problematic. And then the response to all of these things and the religious tensions is a period called the Mormon Reformation, which I would not even pretend to steal from Lindsay, as it is one of her favorite things.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:09:37] This is this time period.

John Dehlin [01:09:39] Really quick. Do we want to talk about Albert Carrington in the Hawaiian Mission or.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:09:43] Oh, yeah, I think you should take. I'll give the background, but then you tell the goods because.

John Dehlin [01:09:49] And also, we have polygamy as a requisite for leadership.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:09:53] Yeah, okay. So 1848, territorial legislature, Brigham Young gives his first introduction to what could be argued as blood atonement. So people don't realize this, but for a long, long time, way too long in Utah, the constitution allowed beheading as an acceptable punishment to a lot of things. Utah or the Utah Utah Constitution, the territory.

John Dehlin [01:10:15] I didn't know about the firing squad. I didn't know about the.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:10:17] Yeah, no, beheading was. Beheading was the thing. So he's talking about beheading and he uses blood atonement language in 1848. And I say that because there are several missions now that happen in the Pacific and one of them is in Hawaii. And we cover this in great detail because it's an important thing. Mormons, you know, really do their part to bring smallpox to kill off thousands of indigenous Hawaiians.

John Dehlin [01:10:41] Oh no.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:10:42] And the missionaries are super gross there. Like there's still a long awaited rumor that Joseph F. Smith, Hyrum's son, he was 15 when he first gets called on. He was a troubled boy after his father died. He comes to Utah really angry, getting into fights. His mom dies. So they send him on a mission to Hawaii and. And it says he probably impregnated at least one of the girls there.

John Dehlin [01:11:10] A wife or not a wife?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:11:12] Not a wife. The missionaries were sleeping with the women and molesting the women, assaulting the women, whatever you want to raping the women. And so Albert Carrington is an example of this.

John Dehlin [01:11:22] What women?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:11:23] Indigenous Hawaiian women. We talk about this. They get into trouble doing this. Do you want to talk about that and talk about Carrington?

Bryan Buchanan [01:11:33] I'm just. Carrington's due later, so we'll.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:11:35] Sorry, who's the guy that blood atones?

Bryan Buchanan [01:11:37] Hiram Clark.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:11:38] Hiram Clark. Tell him the Hiram Clark story.

Bryan Buchanan [01:11:40] Clark is an interesting man. He has had red flags before and he gets to Hawaii and is the mission president and the elders are troubled by him. He's clearly got some mental health challenges going on and he's doing some very odd things. He's got some interesting ideas around sexuality and he finally can't take it and goes back to California. Just kind of abandons his post. And it's painted various ways by family, but one account is thought that he dies by suicide as sort of a way to atone for his misdeeds in Hawaii. And it's a very sad, ugly, messy story.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:12:29] He clearly suffers from sore suffers. He clearly commits some sort of sexual transgression, sexual sin, sexual assault. That's bad enough that he feels bad enough that he travels back to San Francisco and he blood atones himself in front of his own son. And so that's why I think, does

John Dehlin [01:12:48] that mean he kills himself or he

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:12:50] kills himself in front of his own son? Albert Carrington's a perv for another time. Sorry, get them mixed up.

Bryan Buchanan [01:12:59] Every ear has its own one.

Missionary Misconduct and Apostolic Scandals

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:13:01] But I bring this up because the missionaries, like these guys were doing stuff like Parley Pratt. There are stories of Parley Pratt and other missionaries that have their hands like they're on their missions and they've got their hands up the skirts of women sitting on their laps. And these are married men.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:13:17] And so in Hawaii, what's interesting is this is they start and they go over before polygamy is announced. But after it's announced, you have a lot of the missionaries that come over from their mission come back to the Utah period. And Utah is now just getting started. And later on, they're going to bring these things to way later on to different islands in Polynesia, including New Zealand, where you have a lot of fundamentalist lore that starts with polygamy in the island.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:13:46] And a lot of them justify it by saying, you know, these are Lamanite women. There's some debate on their lineage, too, but that they can marry these women. And so some of them, Amanda Komodo has done some work on, you know, women from the islands who've been married as plural wives who they try to take back here. But we just thought that was worth mentioning that Mormonism is still going out into the world as they're settling in Utah.

John Dehlin [01:14:11] Yeah, like, you know, I remember the primary song of the latter day prophets, you know, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff. Right.

Bryan Buchanan [01:14:19] Are you going to remember the F, John?

John Dehlin [01:14:21] Yeah. Remember.

Bryan Buchanan [01:14:21] Will you remember the F?

John Dehlin [01:14:22] Yeah. Joseph F. Smith remembered the F. Like, you're just. This story is kind of destroying my idealistic perceptions of all of them. So we've got John Taylor as a polygamist lying to the, you know, women out there in England. What did you just say about Woofer Woodruff? What did he. We just mentioned him.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:14:43] She married underage girls, but, yeah, he would. We've got plenty of Woodruff fun coming up, too.

John Dehlin [01:14:48] Yeah. And then we've got Joseph F. Smith impregnating native rumors.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:14:53] That's a rumor.

John Dehlin [01:14:54] Okay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:14:54] That's a rumor that we cannot. But, you know, he.

Bryan Buchanan [01:14:58] I would say it's not implausible.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:14:59] It's not implausible because we know that they were sleeping around with indigenous Hawaiian women.

John Dehlin [01:15:04] You just don't think of your Mormons prophets doing these sorts of Things in their. You know, in their adulthood.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:15:11] Oh, yeah. They were all alcoholics, too.

John Dehlin [01:15:13] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:15:15] The status of indigenous women in all this is very interesting because they're. I mean, as a whole, in all of Mormon theology throughout the 19th century is very. They're in this weird, liminal space. They're in limbo. Because at some point, we're hearkening back to the 1831 revelation that that Mormon man can marry them and then they will become white and delightsome. That idea. But other points, the thought swings more to, no, they shouldn't be involved in polygamy or temple ordinances. That's part of it, too. And so all along the way, their status is being redefined and changed and hashed out. And it's never good, but it's constantly being redefined as we move along.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] Yeah. Well, I guess that's what makes your job so fun and a little dark. Right, Is learning all these tidbits.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:16:05] Yeah, there's a lot. The Hawaiian mission, actually, listen to our episode on it, because it's outside of just polygamy. There's some crazy, crazy stuff that happens.

John Dehlin [01:16:16] Well, we talked about Albert Carrington in the episode. We did, yes.

Bryan Buchanan [01:16:21] Gary was here. Yes. Yep.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:16:23] Do you just want to get him out of the way since I brought him up at the wrong time?

John Dehlin [01:16:27] Sure.

Bryan Buchanan [01:16:28] Because it does play into the idea of shenanigans during missions.

John Dehlin [01:16:33] He is before the Reformation in your outline.

Bryan Buchanan [01:16:36] He's my fault.

John Dehlin [01:16:39] I can't bring him up later.

Bryan Buchanan [01:16:40] Yeah, we'll put him in. Well, you know, let's just talk about him right now, because he doesn't necessarily fit well in that period because it's in Britain.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:16:47] But this is just our pervy mission story.

John Dehlin [01:16:49] Okay. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:16:50] He's the mission president because I did

John Dehlin [01:16:52] remember him later in the 1800s. Yeah. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:16:54] So there had been red flags in Salt Lake, but they don't seem to have been too many. And they don't. They didn't have any effect. So it's while he's president of the British mission that the problems really start happening. And it doesn't come out until he comes home and his successor is John Henry Smith. And he gets there and he starts getting story after story that Carrington has been really handsy with the staff at the mission home. And several of these women will emigrate to Utah. And more of the story comes out, but Carrington keeps denying to his brethren, who initially want to say, well, they're just rumors.

Bryan Buchanan [01:17:37] It's just slander. Right. This is the persecution complex that really comes back and so over time, they start hearing more and more and more. And finally the lies start to crumble. And once his colleagues realize the extent of what's happened, they are horrified. And Carrington has.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:18:03] What's that? Horrified Presentism.

Bryan Buchanan [01:18:06] Carrington has come up.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:18:07] People cared about that stuff back then. What?

Bryan Buchanan [01:18:10] It took some time. It took convincing. They had to really be told multiple times before they would finally listen. Because Carrington has come up with some interesting ideas that are. Graphic theology, his basic idea. As long as he doesn't ejaculate in the women, no harm, no foul. It's a little folly in Israel, is the term that's used.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:18:33] Also a term at byu. Folly in.

Bryan Buchanan [01:18:37] Mormons have long been creative about how they go about things, and they were no different in the 19th century. And so once they realize how bad it is, they finally excommunicate him. But it, you know, and it takes letters to all of the 12 where they essentially vote by letter what to do with them. And he's excommunicated. He immediately. He doesn't seem to think any of this is wrong.

John Dehlin [01:19:02] He was an apostle, right?

Bryan Buchanan [01:19:03] He was an apostle, Longtime apostle. And he's an interesting guy, too, because he was much better educated than most of his colleagues. He had worked in the historian's office. And, yeah, it's just an ugly, terrible, gross story. And he wants to be rebaptized, and they don't want to let him. And there's differing feelings on how to handle his case. And he is rebaptized, but that's about it. And dies a sad, gross, lonely old man, for the most part.

John Dehlin [01:19:32] And tell him the name of Gary Brazer's book that you.

Bryan Buchanan [01:19:35] If you want to know more about this story, and you should, a book called justice and Mercy. One of the chapters is on this whole story, incredibly well documented by Gary.

John Dehlin [01:19:44] It's basically about naughty apostles. You want to learn about naughty apostles?

Bryan Buchanan [01:19:47] If you want the naughty stories. Gary's book is. It's fascinating.

John Dehlin [01:19:51] Richard Lyman's in there.

Bryan Buchanan [01:19:52] Richard Lyman's in there. Yeah. It's very, very interesting.

John Dehlin [01:19:55] Okay. All right. Got that out of the way.

Bryan Buchanan [01:19:58] There's Albert carrington's due his 15 minutes of infamy.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:20:02] I still find myself trying to, like, say, oh, no, Lindsay, you said pervy apostles. Like, people aren't going to listen to you anymore. And I'm trying to eradicate that thinking, because if you're out there and you're not listening to me because I said pervy apostles, and you're like, she's biased. You're damn right I'm biased. What else would you call a guy that goes on a mission and molests people so bad that he kills himself for it? Or Albert Carrington, who lies to many people, his wife, his wives, his friends, and does this, like, can we stop? Like, if you have faith in your tradition, if you love Mormons, like I do, call it for what it is.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:20:41] We're all people. We all make mistakes. And if we try to, you know, excuse leaders from this stuff, I'm telling you, I see the real effects in communities today. So sorry for the preachiness, but I still find myself going like, oh, no, I called it pervy. It is pervy.

Bryan Buchanan [01:21:00] One of his colleagues will say, we listened to the most disgusting recitations from the old man's lips. They agreed. And I will say, to their credit, once they understand the extent of it, they treat it just like they would anybody. They publish the notice in the Deseret News. You know, they don't allow him to be rebaptized and restored immediately. So they do handle it like they would anyone, even though he is one of their colleagues. So I will say, once they finally decide to listen, I think they did act fairly how they would anyone else. There was no special treatment for him.

John Dehlin [01:21:34] Yeah, but. But usually people in power want to avoid punishing other people in power just to avoid the scandal. So their arms have to kind of be twisted behind their back to force them to punish one of their own. I mean, that's kind of the old boys network kind of thing, right? Yeah. Okay. And then you had, as the last point, polygamy as a prerequisite for leadership. Right. Is that right before the Mormon Reformation?

Polygamy Culture Growing Through the 1850s

Bryan Buchanan [01:22:01] Yeah. This starts to grow throughout the 1850s, and. And at this point, I think of it kind of like Boyd Packer's unwritten order of things. Like, there's no rule, but it's more or less understood. That's kind of how it works if you want to be a bishop, if you're going to be a stake president, anyone in a prominent position, you need to be a polygamist. Thirty years later, it will definitely become canonized. Not in English, but it's there. And so there are a few exceptions. One of our favorites is the pirate Bishop Samuel Woolley there with his earring, an eye patch.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:22:34] That's why it's a pirate. Just kidding. It's just an earring.

Bryan Buchanan [01:22:38] Just an earring. It's enough. But those exceptions are rare. There aren't very many of them. And so that will just keep growing toward the end of the 19th century. And if people are in positions where they aren't, they will be leaned on to become polygamous, to live that higher law. And there's a lot of social pressure that gets applied to these men if they don't want to. And there are some that don't. And John Smith, who's the presiding patriarch, is a very reluctant polygamist. His wife's right along there with him. And so we do see stories like that, but they're fairly uncommon.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:23:16] But certainly for a good portion of this time period, the quorum of the 12 are all polygamous many times over.

John Dehlin [01:23:24] Okay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:23:25] And that wouldn't change until Hebert Grant's death.

John Dehlin [01:23:28] So, yeah. Okay. Well, as I've been reading Barbara and Richard Turley's book, the Mormon Reformation is a really important time period that sort of ushers in a lot of things, including the Mountain Mountain Massacre. So how do we introduce it? Because I don't know a lot about it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:23:51] So back to the 1850s, where the state of Deseret, the church is going to try seven times to get a bid for statehood, and they have a hard time. And just as an example, it's not that hard to become a state. Nevada petitions is a territory for, like, only two years and then becomes a state. It's polygamy that stops Utah from becoming a State in 1852. The territorial legislature votes in slavery, and Indian slavery, they sort of legalize it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:24:25] And that does some interesting things with the tribal relations. So I bring that up because it's going to come in later. Wakara is the Ute chief, and he's really running a slave trade. The Utes were slavers for several centuries. Ned Bleck, Black Hawk, who is an indigenous scholar, says, you know, as a way to sort of deal with in colonization, folks like Wakara decide to take advantage of it, and they become slavers. So the Utes would go and steal often. Navajo, Shoshone go shoot children and sell them to Mormons. And of course, you know, Brigham Young in 1852 doesn't really like this, but he decides that maybe Mormons can buy Indian children as a way to help them and maybe fulfill the promises of the Book of Mormon.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:25:16] And that will translate to plural wives later on in the Utah period. 1854, 1855, we have a few things. We have the crickets and the grasshoppers. We have the drought. We have a terrible winter. Their crops fail. It's a really, really hard time. People are struggling, and people are getting out of Utah en masse. They're going to. Soldiers are begging to get out. And Brigham's dealing with a lot of disloyalty, and he doesn't like it. And at the same time, there are growing conflicts with the Shoshone to the north of the church. And so there are some. An end to the Utes, sort of south of Mormons.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:25:53] And so there are some conflicts that break out and some massacres that happen, including the Gunnison massacre, where some soldiers who are coming across basically are massacred by some Shoshone. So the government says, we're going to send some federal soldiers out to investigate. So they're sending federal soldiers to Utah. Meanwhile, Utah is losing. Brigham is losing power. He's losing trust. And as soldiers come into Utah, Mormons petition them and say, help us. You got to get us out of here. We need help. We want to get out. Brigham doesn't like this. And so one of my favorite stories leading up to the Mormon Reformation is the Steptoe Expedition.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:26:35] We always talk about Johnson's army, the Utah Expedition, the great thing that starts off the 1857 war. But a couple years before this happens, the Steptoe Expedition comes across. They're federal soldiers that are sent to investigate the Gunnison Massacre and to do a few other things. And they arrive in Utah. Steptoe is going to replace Brigham Young. He's now 54.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:26:59] He's done his term. He's done his first four years as governor. And the federal government wants Colonel Steptoe to step in and replace Governor Young. Steptoe doesn't want to do it, so he concedes to Young. And General Steptoe does a good job at kind of making the Mormons like him. The problem is his soldiers are now frequenting and they're bored, and they're in Salt Lake City. They're going to brothels, they're going to dances, they're going to saloons. They're bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars into the economy of Salt Lake City. But the women are starting to escape with the soldiers. And this hits close to home with several of the apostles. One of Heber's wives leaves with one of the expeditions.

Bryan Buchanan [01:27:42] What?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:27:43] Yep. This is where I always say, you can see Heber's rhetoric become really sexist after this. This is where he starts saying women can't be trusted. Women are whores. Women, you need to watch your wives, lock them up. You know, he doesn't say that exactly, but he says a lot of terrible things about women. After, you know, the soldiers steal away his wives. My favorite story in Mormon history is the story of Brigham Young's daughter in law, Mary Ayres Young. She was said to be a beautiful young woman. She was married to his son, Joseph Young. And he's off on a mission and the Steptoe expedition comes into town.

Soldiers, Prostitution, and the Utah Social Order

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:28:18] And we know this because we have letters from the soldiers writing to their friends back east. One of the soldiers, his name is Sylvester Mowry, he goes to a dance and he meets Mary Ayers Young and he falls in love with her. He actually says in his letter to his friend, she's the hottest young thing you could ever get or something like he said he calls her hot. He actually says that word.

Bryan Buchanan [01:28:39] He's young, he's single, he's having a good time.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:28:41] He's having a good time. He says she's the most beautiful girl he's ever. And he said, and Brigham Young, when he saw soldiers, he looked like we would f U C k our way through town. Perhaps we will.

John Dehlin [01:28:55] He says, wait, they used that word back then?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:28:58] Of course they did.

Bryan Buchanan [01:28:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:59] What?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:28:59] Yeah, it's not presentism. They actually did. So he's writing these letters back and they fall in love. And she says she's the one that calls, according to him, that she's living in a brothel. She says, I'm trapped here. I don't want to be here.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:29:15] Salt Lake is the biggest brothel in the United States. Please get me out. So they make a plan to run away. Brigham Young gets word of this and he puts a hit out on Mori. And Maori Steptoe's like, man, I'm trying really hard with Brigham Young. So he sends Mowry out to Tooele Valley, Rush Valley in the middle of nowhere. And then we're seeing his letters there as he's going to attempt to run away with Brigham Young's daughter in law. Brigham Young allegedly has this armed guard in the Lion House. They hole her up with this armed guard and she's not able to escape. And eventually Mowry goes to California with some other women.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:29:54] I guess he was a fickle heart. But yeah, that story is so great because it ends up with these soldiers having a confrontation where there's 100 soldiers in downtown Salt Lake and 100 Mormons and they're about to go to war and it's called off last minute and there's no brawl. But this is where it starts.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:30:17] The federal government comes in to investigate stuff and they start taking women. And the Mormons do not like their Women taken. And so they get really paranoid. And so that happens before Johnston's army, and there are several other detachments that come across. And it's the same kind of thing every time. You have soldiers coming, you have people, especially women, wanting to leave with the soldiers. And often they do, because you have a lot of these lonely, plural wives. Many of them are young, married to old men whose husbands are on missions. And these young, horny soldiers that come into town that are going to dances and, you know, have all this promise.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:30:58] And so that is one of the things that I don't think gets enough credit for this conflict. You also have a lot of other interesting things happening. Parley Pratt now is on a mission. He falls in love with a woman named Eleanor Maclean. She's married. She claims her husband's abusive and a drunk. His name's Hector. She runs off to be a plural wife of Parley Pratt. Hector Maclean, in one of the greatest, you know, Wild west stories of all time, chases him down cross country to Arkansas in the spring of 1857 and murders parley Pratt in cold blood for stealing his wife. And this really plays into the massacre.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:31:36] So you have a lot of things happening. But right before 1857, Brigham Young decides, what am I going to do with this apostasy? And he starts the Mormon Reformation. And with that, do you want to tell us about Jedediah Grant really quick.

John Dehlin [01:31:50] Can I ask you a really quick question? Then we'll go right to Jedediah Grant. Sure. How is, if Brigham Young is the governor for a lot of this time, and he's the prophet and he has all the power in Salt Lake City, how is there allowed to be a brothel?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:32:07] Well, he's not dumb. He's a good businessman. And he knows that you know, what soldiers want. And prostitution is everywhere in the old west, including amongst his own saints, as we learned with Garden Grove.

John Dehlin [01:32:18] But you think he could have stamped it out? He could have just always got his police or security officers or whatever and ran him out of town.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:32:26] Well, and we're going to talk about the. The time that they do that with the church. Least brothel. But no, right from the get go. Like as soon as soldiers arrive or minors, you have the sex, commercial sex work.

John Dehlin [01:32:43] I just wonder whether he was willing to turn a blind eye to that, even amongst his own saints. I wonder if there was some sort of. That's just the way it was back then. And even faithful, righteous leaders knew that those places existed and felt like they were either unavoidable or maybe an important part of the social order.

Bryan Buchanan [01:33:07] Brigham's kind of. Of two minds about what all this means, because on the one hand, they. They want to be isolated, but they can't be. And that's increasingly clear that they're not going to be isolated. And so they like the money coming in to the economy because they are very poor, especially cash poor. It's essentially a trade economy. But at the same time, they don't love the elements that come with it. But also, you have to think that also provides a pretty good foil to be mad about them coming in. So there's a lot of things going on.

John Dehlin [01:33:44] I mean, I guess you need an enemy to always rail against and fight against.

Bryan Buchanan [01:33:48] And that leads very well into the Reformation.

John Dehlin [01:33:50] Okay, all right.

Bryan Buchanan [01:33:51] Because they leaders feel like there is this spiritual depression going on. And so. And with this lack, this increasing lack of isolation, with the world coming in, the Gentiles are coming here. We need to recommit ourselves to the basics of Mormonism. And a lot of this is due to his counselor, Jedediah Grant, who is this absolute firebrand at the podium. And he starts this campaign of visiting the settlements and just ripping them up one side and the other. And you get reports of Wilford Woodruff talking about him raining pitchforks down on the congregation. And Brigham is more or less kind of letting Jedediah drive the Reformation boss and cheering him on the whole way. And the rhetoric gets pretty ugly. And this is where we start to see the themes of blood atonement really crop up.

John Dehlin [01:34:48] And for our never Mormons, maybe just define that really quick.

Bryan Buchanan [01:34:51] So this is such a fascinating topic because there are definitely hints of it with Joseph Smith. We kind of hinted at this earlier. So there's a fascinating discussion that happens in Nauvoo in 1843, and there is a national case of a hanging. And they're sitting around at the office talking about it. And George A. Smith says, I don't think I like hanging. And Joseph Smith says, I don't either. I think we should shoot them or we should slit their throats. And then he uses this fascinating phrase, he says, and then we'll let the smoke ascend up to heaven.

Bryan Buchanan [01:35:24] And this is probably drawing on Revelation language in the New Testament, where the incense that's used in the ritual is the prayer of the saints rising to heaven. And he sort of repurposes this imagery to this blood that people spill for their own sins is now an offering. And the idea is there are certain sins that go beyond the pale of Jesus atonement. And so there's some that you have to have your own bloodshed. Now, it's not always clear whether that means you doing it yourself, like the Hyrum Clark story, or whether that's sort of like others doing it to you.

Bryan Buchanan [01:36:08] And we get the height of it is February 1857. Brigham Young preaches that, say, someone in the community commits this sin that is just beyond the pale. Will you love that man or woman enough to shed their blood? And then he says, that is what Jesus meant.

Bryan Buchanan [01:36:29] That is quite the statement. And that will be forever debated of whether that's rhetoric, that's just rhetoric, or he really means it. And the problem is, is he never really defines what if he's just talking or if he really means you to do that. And so as a result, we get some stories that are clearly people listening to things like this and saying, he means do that, and they do it, and how many of them and who does it are hotly debated. But it's clear that people are not always just hearing it as rhetoric. That much is clear. And we actually have our friend Mike Comer is working on a book for signature down the road a little bit that will be a good history of blood atonement, which we definitely need.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:37:23] So the height of the Reformation, 1856, right, everyone has suffered. It's a terrible time. This is where you're eating the sago lily bulbs, you know, the seagulls, the crickets, all of that, which is kind of a myth. But it's a hard time. Brigham Young tries several things. One of the interesting things is he holds a contest where they, you know, want to kill all the vermin that are eating the crops. And so he puts a script of money count on the heads of the vermin. And basically it's a hunting contest for all the settlements. You know, you kill a coyote, you get this much points.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:38:01] You kill squirrel, you get this many points. And the Mormons kill hundreds of thousands of animals. That radically shifts the ecology of the place. And so when we're talking about colonization, the Mormons aren't just displacing, you know, indigenous Utes and sending them somewhere else. They're taking their food sources, they're disrupting the ecology. Virginia Kearns talks about this in her book about Sally Knash, that this is colonization, bringing in all these foreigners, plants. It radically shifts the way that these people have been hunting and gathering for hundreds of thousands of years.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:38:38] What it also does, too, is it creates this idea of scarcity. And Brigham Young takes advantage of this. He starts The Reformation, a deliberate rebranding of Mormonism. And he uses Jedediah Grant, who's Heber J. Grant's father. They called him Brigham's sledgehammer, even though he was this tiny, thin little guy. It starts in what's now Davis County, Farmington area, Kaysville. They have a sermon and they say, you're all dirty and wicked, and that's why we're suffering. That's why we're starving, and this is why the Gentiles are thriving and we are not. So let's all get rebaptized. 500 people step up and they start getting re baptized.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:39:18] And eventually hundreds and hundreds more are going to get rebaptized to sort of renew their commitment to Mormonism. This is where we get the idea of home teachers that start. Brigham Young develops a whole list of catechisms, like Catholic catechisms, that these home teachers, two by two, are going to go to every house in every settlement and ask you if you are obeying these things. And some of them are just practical things like, do you bathe every day? Do you feed your cattle? But some are, how loyal are you? Are you paying your tithing? These kind of things.

The Mormon Reformation and Its Excesses

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:39:52] And it gets to be so out of control, so zealous, that even Brigham Young's own wives or friends start to go, I don't know about this. I mean, there's a story that Eliza R. Snow and Lorenzo Snow, who are like, these nerdy poets and scholars, they start the polysophic society where they want to get together and discuss literature. And Jedediah Grant, like, tells them it's or Hebrew.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:40:15] Heber Kimball criticizes them and tells them that, you know, it's too wicked and it's, you know, too inappropriate. And Hannah Tatfield King, who is part of this society, goes, well, Heber Kimball would know about inappropriate. You know, she, like, starts to criticize them because they're like, whoa, guys, this is going too far. There's a story that happens in the Bowery where Jedediah Grant is asking everyone to confess their sins. And people start getting up and yelling sins that they don't even commit. And then they start beating each other and whipping each other with rods and sticks to curse their sins. And it's just madness. It just gets out of control.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:40:51] And this is sort of the. The rhetoric that we're talking about, the blood atonement. They. Jedediah Grant is asking to form committees to decide who gets to be blood atoned. And again, the idea is some sins are that Jesus atonement can't cover. You have to shed your own blood, and the blood has to be spilt to the ground as an offering. And so whether it's literal or not doesn't matter, because it's taken literal by many, many people.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:41:21] Springville is a particular hotbed of the Reformation. And you have the police. The police in Springville. There's this horrible story about, like, they go and catechize everybody, and there's a guy there that says, well, you know, I don't wash my hands as often as I should, or I don't want to wash my hands or something, or, I don't wash my food. And the police bring him out, set him at a public table, and they all surround him with guns until he, like, washes his hands or something. It's, like, out of control. And he eventually gets out of Dodge because he's like, this is crazy. So it was a scary time.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:41:56] And this is where you start hearing about castrations. You hear about young boys. This is still, you know, very hotly debated in the Mormon community because it's not well documented, but we do have documentation of, like, Bishop Warren Snow, who goes way back to the Missouri period. He is a bishop now in the Manti area. And it's said that he had a young boy castrated.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:42:19] There's debate on why. The most common story is that the young man wanted to marry a girl that Warren Snow wanted for his wives. But Porter Rockwell and Bill Hickman will say that they castrated people for sexual sins.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:42:33] There are several stories around southern Utah at this time, too, that, you know, you'll be castrated if you don't play ball, if you will. Sorry for the. I didn't mean it to be a pun, but anyway, so it's just a terrible time. And then you've got, like, the Parrish Potter murders, people who are. Who flee the country and are tracked down and killed. Paul has done a really great look at apostates who are trying to leave during this time and what happens to them. Their barns are getting burned down. People are getting hunted down and killed. And sometimes you'll have people that will leave the territory and they.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:43:07] They are killed by the Cheyenne or something, by indigenous raiders. And people don't know. Was it Danites that tracked him down or was it something else? It was a crazy time. And this is where, as this is happening, the government is starting to get wind of some of these stories, some of these murders, some of these conflicts, and they're like, are Mormons going to rebel now at the end of 1850, you've got a huge problem happening in the country where you've got the Civil War is going to be started. So they're already dealing with rebellion from Southern states. So they don't know what to do about this Utah thing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:43:47] So they send a big detachment out. This is Johnson's army, the Utah expedition. And at this point, after the Reformation, Brigham Young has tried to maintain control. And what he's done is he's now isolated people even more. He's got more power and control than ever. And he's in his second term as territorial governor. Well, as the massacre and things happen right before the massacre, the government says, I don't know about this guy. We're starting to hear that it's getting out of control. Let's send this government over to sea. Brigham Young hears about that and decides to go to war basically against the government. And so the apocryphal story is it's July 24, 1857.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:44:35] It's the centennial year of Centennial. Ten years. Ten years since they arrived in the valley. And they go up to Silver Lake. Have you been to Silver Lake?

John Dehlin [01:44:44] No.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:44:45] It's a beautiful lake. You can just go walk up there. I like to think about this because they hold this 10 year celebration. They pull out their old pioneer clothes, they wear them. They sleep in the tents that they slept in when they came in the valley, they recreate. They're celebrating Pioneer Day. They put a big American flag on the mountain peak and they're celebrating their running drills. And it's said that Porter Rockwell and several other writers come riding in to these 2,000 people and say, guess what? The federal government is coming to go to war against us. Brigham Young sends everybody home and they start preparing for war.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:45:21] This is July 1857. From July until the end of the year of 1857, 1858 even, we have what is almost known as like the Utah War, where they say there weren't very many deaths, but there were at least 200 people, including the Baker Fancher party, that get brutally massacred as a result of this fear and paranoia. So I think that kind of leads us into that.

John Dehlin [01:45:47] All right, so before we jump to the Utah War, I think, Brian, there are a few more points about the Mormon Reformation time period that you wanted to cover. Maybe let's start with marriage rates and Brigham Young making money.

Bryan Buchanan [01:46:01] This is part of a larger problem, which is that the Mormon Reformation has been kind of ignored in scholarship at this point. We don't have a single book just about The Reformation, which is unfortunate. We do have a master's thesis that is good, but it's like 50 years old at this point. And one of the things that he includes there is this statement from Stan Ivins, an earlier researcher, and he says if our tabulations are a true index, he says the rate of marriages was 65% higher during 1856 and 57 than any other two year period.

Bryan Buchanan [01:46:38] And that's a point where Kip, in the back of your head says napoleon, how can anyone even know this? Because to know that you have to know the rates for all the other two year periods. And there's just no way of knowing that we don't have the data for it now. And that's a claim that gets repeated over and over in other things about the Reformation.

Bryan Buchanan [01:46:59] It clearly was important and that was part of the, the, the rhetoric that's getting pushed. We have this really interesting letter from the wife of John Smith, the presiding patriarch, Helen Fisher, writing to a friend who says every girl from the age of 10 years to 18 years old is being snapped up during this period.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:47:18] So I read, I read a gentile account saying you put a dress on a, on a fence post and it'll get married up.

John Dehlin [01:47:26] So I mean I'm. The big number's 10 that they were maybe not marrying 10 year olds, but at least like arranging or planning their ultimate fate. Is that what we're saying here?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:47:39] I haven't seen very many. I haven't seen any 10 year old marriages. Connell O', Donovan, like I said, has done some research on underage marriages. He calls it pedagamy, polygamy and pedophilia basically. And there are instances as young as 12 that we know of.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:47:58] Could 10 year olds have been married or promised? Yeah, it's possible. We just don't have good documentation on that. I think more as the Reformation steps up. One of the numbers I heard was 64% of all marriages that occurred in polygamy happened in those two years. So it's. Yeah, the numbers are funny and people are not honest. Scholars have not done a good job data dump on how many people were being married at all in polygamy. But we do know that it is a numbers game. And of course in the 1850s the Mormons were fudging the census numbers so they could get more federal funding and for their bid for statehood.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:48:39] So we don't actually know exactly how many people, but we do know that as men married and were called to bring home more wives, I mean the rhetoric really Was like, if you don't marry plurally, you're going to lose your whole family. And the family you've got. If you don't have more wives, you'll lose the one you've got. And so a lot of people are trying to get married as fast as they can to do this. And of course, Brian can talk about this, but Brigham Young was charging for these marriages. One of the.

John Dehlin [01:49:06] Wait, he would make money?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:49:08] Of course. Yeah, yeah. No, this was an enterprise.

John Dehlin [01:49:12] Whoa.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:49:12] I heard that to perform the ceremony from Brigham Young was a special deal, and people would often offer him gold pieces, silver pieces, but it was also. There was a fee. There was like a marriage fee to get married. And so they were making money off that, too. And one of the things people have to understand, and this is a lot of the work that I do with film now when we're talking about Old west, when it comes to Mormons, is it's like the Wild west, except the Mormons run the probate court. So instead of sheriffs, you have bishops, basically.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:49:45] So at this time, the whole legal system in the Utah territory is run by bishops. So anything from crimes to marriages is being handled by ecclesiastical leaders. And so Brigham is in control of everything. And I think people don't understand that enough. To understand a community, you really do have to understand the laws that are happening. And I used to be really bored by legal history, but our friend John Dinger, who's a legal historian, has done some fantastic work on, like, the probate courts in Utah and the crimes and the punishments of this time period. And it really does factor into polygamy. You get sometimes men who are accused of molesting underage girls, and they deal with that in a variety of different ways.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:50:34] Sometimes they'll marry the girls to their abuser, or sometimes the man will be punished, you know, in the courts for it. In an ecclesiastical court, he'll be cut off or he'll be given a fine or something like that. So there are a variety of ways of doing this, but it does show that underage marriages, even though, like, again, as you're marrying that you're marrying all the 18 year olds, then you're marrying 17 year olds, you're running out of 17 year olds, then 16 year olds. It starts to get where people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is getting out of control. And I think that that, of course, is remedied by what happens in the 1860s.

Ann Eliza Young and Legal Challenges to Polygamy

John Dehlin [01:51:09] Okay, do we want to talk about Ann Eliza Young? Is that an important part?

Bryan Buchanan [01:51:17] She's such a Fascinating story. Yeah. So she's born in Nauvoo just right after Joseph Smith's death. And her father is a carriage maker. And so he's important in the local economy. But more importantly, he becomes close with Brigham Young. He's a friend of his. And so her father. Father marries a plural wife right after she's born. And so she grows up in polygamy, and she. It's not a happy household. Her mother has suicidal ideation along the way. It's really not pleasant. And so that's kind of. Her formative experience is not pleasant. Plural family. And so they come to Utah. She has a talent for the theater, and so she performs at the Salt Lake Theater.

Bryan Buchanan [01:51:59] And Brigham Young watches her going back and forth from home and says, you know what? Why don't you just live at the lion House? And it seems like he's already kind of got his eye on her at that point.

John Dehlin [01:52:10] And the lionhouse is.

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:12] This is where Brigham and a lot of his wives will live in Salt Lake, right next to his office.

John Dehlin [01:52:17] It's right there on Temple Square, right?

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:19] Yes, sir.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:52:19] They called him the lion of the Lord. All these early leaders like to have animals. John D. Lee had an eagle over his. They like to, you know, give themselves some sort of animal symbol. And he was a lion.

John Dehlin [01:52:33] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:34] It's still there. Go visit it. It's fascinating.

John Dehlin [01:52:37] I'm sure they give you a completely historically accurate.

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:39] They're not going to talk about Ann Eliza too much during the tour unless it's changed, but that's why you're here today.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:52:45] It's better than it used to be.

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:48] We went there with our friend Mr. Nemo when he was in town.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:52:53] Oh, yeah, that's right.

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:54] That was a lot of fun.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:52:55] That was fun because they were trying to tell Nemo, who comes from England, like, this house is from the 1850s. Do you know how old that is? He was like, my apartment's older than this.

John Dehlin [01:53:06] I've been in Nemo's apartment.

Bryan Buchanan [01:53:09] It was a fun tour. So Anne meets, not surprisingly, someone her own age, and Brigham kind of puts the kibosh on that. But she does end up marrying an actor who works with her at the. At the theater. It's not happy.

Bryan Buchanan [01:53:23] He's physically abusive, and he's. We've talked about this. We did a whole episode on her in Year of Polygamy. And the line between when a married plural husband is cheating on his first wife or courting a new plural wife, that line more or less doesn't exist. And so he's flirting with all the other women at the theater. And within the theology that she's presented with, Ann Eliza doesn't really have a lot of recourse. But eventually, thanks to help from her parents, she does get divorced.

Bryan Buchanan [01:53:58] But then. So she's now this still very, very young woman who's very beautiful by all accounts, and is again being pursued. And another man tries to marry her. And Brigham Young shuts it down, finally realizes, okay, I need to do something. So he takes Ann Eliza for a walk and then has a talk with her father. And then he's married to her. And she's 24 at this point. She's still very young. And it's an interesting relationship because it's Brigham Young's first plural marriage in three years. And so it clearly seems like he's gone out of his way to marry her, but it's not terribly happy.

Bryan Buchanan [01:54:40] There are some accounts that he initially paid a lot of attention to her, and Eliza will say that he paid no attention to her. And so she chooses not to live at the Lionhouse, but to live at a cottage elsewhere in Salt Lake. And it's a lonely existence. She takes in borders to support herself. And one of them is this judge non Mormon who is very friendly to her. And he slowly convinces her that, listen, you don't have to be trapped in this.

Bryan Buchanan [01:55:04] You can leave. And that plants the idea in her head that grows. And she's unhappy religiously. And so the solution is, well, you need to go and be rebaptized, and that will sort of recommit yourself to Mormonism. She goes back to the endowment house where her marriage had been performed, and it's very unpleasant. She says. Everyone is just going through the routine, and that's sort of her religious turning point.

Bryan Buchanan [01:55:29] And then she says, well, I gotta make a living, so I need to make the boarding house more profitable. So she goes to Brigham Young and says, listen, I need a decent stove. And Brigham Young says, I have people coming in my office all day long asking for things. How can I do this? And that's the sort of turning point in the marriage for her, and should

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:55:50] have bought her the stove. Should have bought her the stove.

Bryan Buchanan [01:55:53] In hindsight, Brigham Young would have probably bought her a house and a spot stove and everything else, because it's about to get real ugly. So what happens is she leaves in the dead of night and she auctions off all of her stuff. And then she sues Brigham Young for divorce. She wants $1,000 a month in alimony. She wants $20,000 in court costs. She wants 200,000 from his future estate. She's not messing around.

John Dehlin [01:56:18] That's a lot of money back then.

Bryan Buchanan [01:56:19] That's a lot. That's a lot of money now.

John Dehlin [01:56:21] Exactly.

Bryan Buchanan [01:56:23] So that's it. And Brigham Young says, hey, now, listen, this marriage wasn't legal, so I owe you nothing. And the judge who's handling this, James McKean, is Brigham Young's avowed enemy. He hates McKean. McKean hates Brigham Young. He's handling the divorce. This is one case where the Bishops don't get to handle it. And that works out for Ann Eliza.

John Dehlin [01:56:47] How is there a judge that Brigham doesn't approve? How does that happen in Bergamot?

Bryan Buchanan [01:56:51] By this point, there have been enough federal appointees. And we'll get into this. This is part of the ramping up federal legislation against this. So, yeah, James McKean, those two are constantly butting heads. And so it eventually will go to trial. And Brigham Young, it's brought down. He's ordered to pay $500 a month in alimony and $3,000 court. And he says, I will not do it. He spends a night in prison. He's then put on house arrest. And this is really interesting. I just sent Lindsey this. We discovered in Brigham Young Jr's journal where Brigham Young says he did pay some of the court costs.

Bryan Buchanan [01:57:29] So I think there's still more to the story, but Brigham Young stalls, stalls, stalls. There's this revolving door of judges. James McKean gets removed, then another one comes in. And the case goes back and forth, but ultimately it is dismissed.

Bryan Buchanan [01:57:43] However, Ann Eliza has had her say because she goes on this speaking tour. PT Barnum originally wanted her in his company, and that doesn't happen. But she goes on a lecture tour through the Mountain West. But then she goes back to Washington, dc.

Bryan Buchanan [01:57:57] This is while the Congress is trying to pass federal legislation that will actually do something. And it seems like she's instrumental in the passing of the Poland act in 1874. That we'll talk about later. But so even though Brigham Young technically won the case, it was ugly. And in the long term, Ann Eliza seems to have been part of the federal legislation movement that will definitely impact Mormons down the road. So she's very important. And then her lecture. Yeah. She turns it into a book that is wildly successful. Wife number 19. Yes. Life number 19.

John Dehlin [01:58:35] And that's like. That's like Nauvoo Expositor William Law level courage. Right. Maybe even more so.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:58:44] Oh, yeah. No, she was fiery. She wasn't the 19th wife. So critics will be like, it's full of untruth. She wasn't even the 19th wife. But nobody knew what wife they were.

Bryan Buchanan [01:58:56] Her biographer said she was the 27th wife. She wasn't the 27th wife either.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:59:00] Yeah. Brigham Young's wife list is very confusing even to Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [01:59:07] Where was she likely? Higher number because he was hiding wives or what?

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:59:11] Probably in the 20s.

John Dehlin [01:59:15] Okay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:59:16] I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:59:16] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:59:17] Yeah. It's funny.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:59:19] We looked into this and we tried

Bryan Buchanan [01:59:21] since his 30s, I think, because it's toward the end, he only marries, I think, two or three more wives. And the last one is Hannah Tapfield King, who was such a fascinating woman.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:59:29] Part of the problem with this too is Brigham Young especially is getting sealed to some women just for eternity only. And so is that a cover? No. A cover for what?

John Dehlin [01:59:41] I don't know. Plausible deniability that you're actually having sex or anything.

Lindsay Hansen Park [01:59:46] Oh, I mean, I think it would give him rights to do it, by the way that they understood the doctrine at the time. But I think mostly it was a way for people to get it into heaven, you know, with him, he seemed to resent these women the most because sometimes they would write him for money. A lot of his wives had to only communicate with him through his secretary. And they would ask for things like, take, you're my husband. Treat me as such. You know, I need some money. And he would write about how they complained all the time. Sometimes he'd give him money, but most of the time he didn't.

Bryan Buchanan [02:00:18] Bring up is an interesting case study because by this point he's getting older. And all along the way, the sexual dynamic of polygamy doesn't seem to be nearly as big of a deal with him as it has been with Joseph Smith. Would you agree with that?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:00:32] Oh, yeah. No. I think his was motivated mostly by power and status. He did have children with some of his wives, but not very many of them. He ended up. I think the official count right now is 56 wives and 57 children or something. Sorry, I've got a lot of numbers. Someone, if I ever get anything wrong, call it out in the comments section and do your homework. I've got a lot of facts floating in here.

Age of Marriage and Sexual Norms in Polygamy

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:00:58] The one thing I will say about sexual dynamics is I look at, like my parents generation. So my parents were born in the, like 1950s and they've been married my whole life. Right. That is such a unique thing in history for people to be together and only have, like one sexual partner. Your whole life, because our ancestors, these Mormons, did not. You need to remember that these early Mormons had multiple sexual partners, whether it was through polygamy or through pre penicillin times. A lot of people died. A lot of women died in childbirth. Men would go on to remarry several times. Women would go through husbands.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:01:35] Polygamy, especially in the 1850s and 60s, was really messy. You could just go to the your bishop and ask for a divorce, or you could abandon someone and that would be a divorce. And so people would leave all the time and then come back or run away with a soldier and change their mind. And so these people were having multiple sexual partners. So when we look at Mormon morality today, LDS morality specifically, it's very different than any other period in history. I think it's very unusual. And we like to say monogamy is like God's standard, one man and one woman. Like, when, like, that's just not a thing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:02:10] I'm not arguing for polygamy. Brigham Young would be very proud of me. But I'm just saying, like, it's just a unique time in history, especially for Mormons who, like, marry the person that they sleep with. Not even your great, great grandparents were doing that.

John Dehlin [02:02:25] Yeah, absolutely. Okay, really quickly, did we talk about the handcuff companies and the underage marriages?

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:35] Thoughts on that one? Because there's some interesting stories. Yeah. She pointed out Connell's research on that. That's one that the problem with things like this is it involves a lot of demographic studies, which take a lot of time, and a lot of data that we don't always necessarily have. There's not. Like you can't just go and find the ledger of all the polygamous marriages for a certain time period. So it involves looking through family histories. It involves, you know, records that are not always reliable. But anyways, Connell has probably done more research on this than anyone, and he's noted a much higher rate of plural marriages for these underage girls in the handcart companies.

Bryan Buchanan [02:03:12] But part of that, too, and these are, you know, ones that occur within a year, two years, that kind of thing. But then there are other stories that take a longer time to play out. So one that comes out is this woman named Sarah Briggs, and she's a child during the handcart period. Her father dies during the trek, then her mother comes to Utah, remarries, but then she dies quickly after. So she then goes to her stepsister's household to be raised, and her husband is a man who is being pressured to take a pluto life, and he doesn't want to do that. And eventually, a few years after that, he's sealed to his first wife, her stepsister, but then also her.

Bryan Buchanan [02:03:49] And she's only 14. So that's one story. Then another one that is becoming increasingly better known involves Levi Savage, who is sort of the hero of the story because he's the one that tries to push back and says, no, no, no, we're leaving way too late. Then eventually says, fine, if you're doing it, I'll go with you. So in the same handcart company as him is a woman named Anne, and he and her two daughters, who. Adelaide and Mary, who are five and six during the trek. So they get to Utah. After a couple years, Levi marries the mother, and then in 1868, he marries both his stepdaughters also.

Bryan Buchanan [02:04:29] And they're 15 and 16 at that point. So the dynamics of that one are weird. So there's a lot of marriages that happen right around that time, but then also others that happen after a few years play out. And so those, again, are not great stories.

John Dehlin [02:04:46] I mean, I guess Joseph married mother, daughter, pairs, but his own stepdaughters, I don't know. I guess he married foster children.

Bryan Buchanan [02:04:55] The Lawrences are essentially his wards.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:04:58] So mother, daughter, things happened as well, too. That wasn't completely uncommon.

John Dehlin [02:05:03] Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:05:04] John D. Lee famously did that.

Bryan Buchanan [02:05:07] And the rationale, which you can argue both ways, is that marrying a woman and then her relatives made it easier for them, which in contemporary polygamy, there are women who are like, yes, that did work out. I think you can also see how, on the other side of the coin, people are like, no, that would make it a million times worse. I'd much rather have a stranger come into this situation. So that one cuts both ways.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:05:31] Well, and maybe this is an inappropriate time to bring this up, but it's been used as justification and abuse in modern LDS culture. I've heard too many stories of women who were molested by their stepfathers who used this doctrine to justify it. So. And like you said, the rationale, the line, the veil between the doctrine and, like, abuse is very thin. It empowers this kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [02:05:59] Yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:06:01] And, you know, fundamentalists famously marry some women to their abusers because of this too, so. Thanks, Brigham.

John Dehlin [02:06:10] Yeah, not fun. Okay, well, I think we've covered the Mormon Reformation period. Does that get us to the Utah War?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:06:19] I think so. So basically, you know, the government comes in to investigate Brigham, they unseat Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [02:06:28] You mentioned the Steptoe expedition, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:06:30] Steptoe expedition. Yeah, it's a crazy story trying to kidnap Brigham Young's daughter in law.

John Dehlin [02:06:35] How is Heber Kimball a creeper? Did we talk about that?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:06:39] Yeah, just. Yeah. Do you want to talk about law of purity right now?

John Dehlin [02:06:42] Sure.

Bryan Buchanan [02:06:43] That's an interesting one. So our friend Christina Rossetti has written an article on this. And it's a concept that becomes better fleshed out later on. But as Mormon theology starts to develop with the growth of polygamy, rhetoric had been mostly about ideas of sexual purity before marriage, but now that comes within marriage because how does that work with plural wives? And so you get sermons from guys like Orson Pratt who talk about how sex is more or less for procreation and especially during pregnancy and lactation. Definitely not.

Bryan Buchanan [02:07:19] But then once you start throwing plural relationships into that, that becomes part of a developing theology. And the rationale is that men are these much more sexual creatures. And so by having plural wives, then the men can be taken care of with their sexual needs. Women don't have sexual needs for the most part. And if they do, no one cares anyways. So that makes that easy.

John Dehlin [02:07:44] That's often true today.

Bryan Buchanan [02:07:46] That hasn't changed a lot. And so we have all these sermons that are based on the science of the time or the made up science of the time. And again the line there is sometimes non existent. And so these sermons get preached. And Heber Kimball, really, it's tough to decide whether Brigham would have been less fun to be married to or Heber. And I'm sure their wives would have loved to debate that one because they would have had a lot of I'll

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:08:17] tell you who, and I hate saying this and people are quote this on TikTok. Heber would have been worse because at least Brigham Young you could had good butter from the dairy house. Heber's wives were poor. Heber's kids were poor. Heber's boys were known as the Heber Kim, the Kimball Boys gang. They were a gang. They would like get drunk and break the law and steal things and harass women. They were bad news. They got in trouble all the time. Heber probably in my opinion, the law of purity comes into place because Heber didn't spend any time with his wives. They were spread out all over the place.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:08:53] He was poor. He didn't have a lot of time to be around them. And they're running off with soldiers. And like I said, once he loses one of his wives to a soldier, you see his rhetoric become super sexist and it's used as foundational doctrine and text for how we view purity today. And so I have a great resentment towards Heber Kimball because he couldn't please his own women. We all have to pay for it today.

John Dehlin [02:09:20] And you heard it here first on Mormon Stories, Lindsay Hansen park expressed a preference for Brigham Young.

Bryan Buchanan [02:09:27] Good catch, Joo.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:09:28] Ew. Ew.

Bryan Buchanan [02:09:29] And part of that, I kind of have to think, is because Heber was genuinely in love with his first wife, Vilate. That was a very good, healthy, romantic relationship that seemed to work pretty well. Brigham's relationships were kind of never good to begin with, so adding more to the mix, why not? But yeah, Heber, his wives were.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:09:51] But they had, what, peach sauce and bread and butter.

Bryan Buchanan [02:09:55] I forgot about that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:09:56] With bread and butter and peach sauce. Heber Kimball. You just had disappointment.

Bryan Buchanan [02:10:01] Lots of sermons about the potter, a lot of clay metaphors.

John Dehlin [02:10:05] I bet if you talk to the right person in church headquarters, you could still be sealed to Brigham. I bet there's still a way to make that happen.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:10:10] Thank you for that. I'm so excited.

Bryan Buchanan [02:10:13] That could be a real Mormon story.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:10:14] You know what, Mormons? If you hate my history, you can

John Dehlin [02:10:17] do that to me and posthumously seal Lindsay to Brigham Young.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:10:21] Oh, he'll love being married to me in the next life.

Bryan Buchanan [02:10:23] And Brigham would do that with women.

John Dehlin [02:10:27] Talk about wife number 19. Try wife number what, 50? Whatever.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:10:30] Trust me, her and I would like each other better than him.

Bryan Buchanan [02:10:33] So speaking of posthumous ceilings, Ann Eliza tells a story that there was a woman that came through to the Salt Lake Theater that Brigham was immediately smitten with. And she, of course, wanted nothing to do with him. So after her death, Brigham had her sealed to him because he always won.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:10:49] Can we just say, I would rather. I'd be sealed to plenty of Brigham's wives. I'll be with them for eternity. That would be a good fit. Hannah. Tap.

Bryan Buchanan [02:10:57] Hannah. I was gonna say Hannah.

John Dehlin [02:10:59] Yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:10:59] We'd get along, you know, I'd take good care of her. I'd take better care of her than Brigham would.

John Dehlin [02:11:06] All right, you heard it again. You heard it here first on Morbid Stories. Brian's smiling, so good work, John. So, okay, so the law of purity

Bryan Buchanan [02:11:21] was what it was essentially, that sex is strictly for procreation. It won't be as hard and fast during this period. There are a lot of hints toward that it's going to where it's later in fundamentalist parts of fundamentalist culture that that will be more explicitly developed by some other guys who did not have great relationships with their own wives.

John Dehlin [02:11:44] But some of that Stuff extends into the 20th century, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:11:47] Yeah. That's why I think it's important mentioning, because it's not widespread. But there were men like Heber Kimball who were telling women, you know, sex was only for procreation. And people ask about that with polygamy. And so. So again, there's this idea of like is, is polygamy just for sex crazed men? It depends on the man and what he does with it.

John Dehlin [02:12:08] Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so the Parish Potter murders and the castrations, is that something?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:12:16] Yeah, we've kind of covered that.

John Dehlin [02:12:17] And the Pioneer Day 1857. We covered Johnston's army approaching and then Mountain Meadows massacre. Anything else we want to explore?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:12:25] I mean, we can let Barbara tell more about the history of that the massacre occurs. We can get into that.

John Dehlin [02:12:30] John D. Lee was a polygamist.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:12:31] I mean, you know, so all the main characters, he was the main, for

John Dehlin [02:12:35] those who don't know, his role in the massacre.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:12:38] So the massacre is the murder of 120 something immigrants coming from Arkansas, partially fueled by the Parley Pratt story. You know, some, some rumors say that the immigrants coming through Utah are bragging about the murder of Parley Pratt. Some say they're brandishing the gun that Joseph Smith was murdered with in Carthage.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:13:00] There's a lot of allegations that they're poisoning their cattle, which we now know is arsenic and the. Sorry, not arsenic, anthrax spores in the soil that comes from all the western migration. But there was a lot of justification for that. One of them was that the Fancher party was, you know, harassing the women and molesting the women, which of course this, you know, you just didn't do in Mormon territory because of what the soldiers had done. And so this was justified to basically murder these innocent immigrants. And you know, we're going to cover this in great detail on our podcast, but Barbara might be a good thing. Source.

John Dehlin [02:13:34] Also, I don't want to steal any thunder, but when they were trying to make up justifications for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, one of the allegations was that there were a bunch of prostitutes in there and that it was okay to murder them because they were a bunch of horse.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:13:50] Yeah, there were all kinds of allegations that most turn out to be second or third hand. And still there's no justification that would justify this. But really the murder is interesting if you follow what happens after. That's why Rick Turley and Barbara Brown's book is so good now because it talks about the COVID up. So the debate that's always existed is did Brigham Young order The massacre or not, doesn't matter. If he did, he definitely helped with the COVID up and we have good evidence of that. And the men profited. John D. Lee especially, he was one of the main instigators. He was certainly the scapegoat.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:14:25] I talk about him a lot because I'm writing about Juanita Brooks and she was his biographer. So I know quite a bit about him. And he of course has at least 17 wives. And they get a lot of the cattle and they get a lot of the clothing from the immigrants that they literally strip off the bodies of these dead immigrants. And of course this leads to a huge backlash with. You know, its commonly understood amongst Mormons that this wasn't talked about, but it was, you know, you don't hide the, the deaths and the murders of 120 people. The tragedy at the time is Brigham Young and other leaders tried to definitely make it seem like it was an Indian massacre.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:15:07] Blame it on the Paiutes. Will Bagley and the Paiutes and the Utes both claim that they were not involved in the actual killing, that they were involved in the raid. One of the things that makes me really like kind of fired up is when we showed this on under the Banner of Heaven. It was important for me to show that like the Paiutes were framed for this because still Mormon scholars, good Mormon scholars, still believe that Paiutes were part of the actual killing and they were part of the raid. But if we believe Paiute and Ute sources, they were out of there before then. They were used.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:15:41] Nephi Johnson even says there were no provants during the killing. And so it just depends on who you use as your source. Bagley says maybe even in the initial raids there were maybe 50 indigenous folks that were recruited. But Brigham Young had held several meetings in August and September before the massacre to try to unify the tribes tribal leaders and to get them to go to war against the federal government.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:16:09] The tribal leaders did not want to do this. They didn't want anything to do with the Mormons wars. They already had problems on their own. And of course the Shoshone, you know, with the, with the Gunnison Massacre ends up getting into gets massacred by federal government that comes in and that results in the Bear river massacre in a few years after the Mountain Meadows massacre. So they didn't want to do this. They get blamed for it. Many years later, John D. Lee actually has men dress up as Indians and murder the women and children. And there are many stories of the survivors of white men washing the paint off their faces.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:16:49] So I just want people to be more responsible in how they talk about that. You know, again, historians, modern historians, I think even Rick Turley and Barbara Jones Brown hold that Paiutes were involved in the killing. And Will Bagley was adamant that they weren't and pilots weren't. So I guess it just depends on who you take as a source.

John Dehlin [02:17:09] Okay. Yeah. Well, that's a super dark part in our history, and thanks for helping us learn a little bit more about it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:17:20] What's important about that is after this, Governor Young is dethroned, and there's a new appointee that brought in from the South. Cummings, Alfred Alfred Cummings. Alfred Alfred Cummings. I'm losing my train of thought. So he comes to unseat Brigham Young. And this is in 1857. Mormons have too much power.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:17:45] All of a sudden, new soldiers arrive. They set up their fort right above, like where the University of Utah is. And they aim their cannon, allegedly where they can point at it anywhere in Salt Lake Valley, and as a show of force. And they're going to bring power back.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:18:02] There are several other rumors of blood atonement. The Duke's party is attacked and robbed of a bunch of cattle. There are several murders. And so the government is going to come in and lay the hammer down. But. And so in 1858, Brigham Young declares martial, or before that, he declares martial law. In 1858, he leads the great Evacuation, where they ban in Salt Lake City, go to. Out of. To Provo. They're going to go to war again with the government. Again. This gets called off and talked out. And then you have.

John Dehlin [02:18:34] I didn't know about the Great Evacuation.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:18:36] Oh, did you never hear those stories in primary about, like, how they had to bury the temple?

John Dehlin [02:18:41] Do you remember those stories? I grew up in Texas. We never heard that story.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:18:44] Did you hear those stories?

Bryan Buchanan [02:18:45] Yeah. And those are interesting because that's probably not their original idea. The Crimean War had just been happening, and that was part of the. The way to get public support on your side is you can't win the war. So you essentially retreat and portray yourself as this persecuted people. And that seems to be what's driving it, is that they will pull out. And the army comes through. And then the coverage of it is these poor Mormons were forced out of their homes by this marauding federal army coming in. And so they direct most people to go south, leave their homes, bury the temple, bury the records.

The Utah War, Mountain Meadows, and Federal Pressure

Bryan Buchanan [02:19:29] And so the soldiers come through, and it's part of an agreement too, is that as long as you just march through Salt Lake, you don't stay there. And then you go out to your camp in the west. Fine. So there's these protracted negotiations, trying to pull it back from the brink of actual arms conflict.

John Dehlin [02:19:46] How do you bury the temple sticking out of the ground?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:19:49] Apparently they had the foundation that they had dug and they started to build it and then they had to rebury it. And it was.

John Dehlin [02:19:54] This is the Salt Lake Temple.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:19:55] Yeah. I was always taught it as this, like faith affirming story, you know, this delightful story. And the same thing, you know, when Johnson's army comes through Echo Canyon or whatever or immigration Canyon, there are all these raids. The Nauvoo Legion is mustered, and the Mormons do all this guerrilla warfare and they basically co op, take over Fort Bridger. They set a bunch of things on fire and they stop the army from coming in. So that's happening as stuff. You know, the massacre is happening in the south. And so this is kind of known as the Utah War. And it's talked down. 1858 Again, the evacuation.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:20:31] 1859, the government sends investigators, Major Carlton, to investigate the massacre. The. The Governor Young is sorry, he's not the governor anymore, but basically Brigham Young negotiates a pardon for Mormons, blames it on the Indian, sends a report, says it's an Indian massacre. They don't have enough resources to see if that's true.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:20:53] And then, of course, within just a few years, he's arrested or there's a warrant out for his arrest again for it. He goes back and forth.

John Dehlin [02:21:01] For who?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:21:02] For Brigham Young. He gets charged for this. But then 1861 happens and it's the Civil War, and all of a sudden, Abraham Lincoln's in charge now and he doesn't have resources. And there's this famous quote that he says Abraham Lincoln talks about.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:21:20] Well, first the Republican Party starts to gain power from Mormons. I mentioned this earlier. We don't realize that the modern Republican Party used Mormonism to gain power. They linked slavery and polygamy as the two relics of barbarism. And what they basically built their platform on was eradicating both. And so there was a lot of pressure on Abraham Lincoln to put down polygamy. It was just as bad as slavery in the minds of a lot of east coast newspapers. And Abraham Lincoln has this famous story where he says, you know, when I was a boy on the farm and we had all this timber that we had to clear, it was too big to cut down, too wet to burn.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:22:03] So we just plowed around it and that's what we're going to do with the Mormons. And so Abraham Lincoln tells Brigham, I'll let you alone if you let us alone. And that's what they did. And they pull all the troops, most of the troops, out of Utah in 1861 and they are used in Civil War. And all of a sudden Brigham Young has power again.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:22:21] Cummings goes back, he's almost done with his term, but it's understood he's not going to come back. And he's a Confederate, he joins the south. So he doesn't return. And Brigham Young thinks that the America is going to fall apart. There's this revelation that Joseph Smith supposedly had, the Civil War is going to come. And they think that this is going to be the end and they're going to be finally their kingdom on earth. So he has power again. And this is kind of where we have the government. Abraham Lincoln appoints a new governor.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:22:53] The Mormons don't like him. They complain that he's wicked and full of abominations. He handles. There's this uprising called the Moroccite War where it's like a Mormon fundamentalist break off sect that goes rogue. The governor handles it wrong. And so the Mormons complain and Abraham Lincoln says, okay, we'll give you a new governor. He appoints a new governor, that new governor dies mysteriously within like three months.

John Dehlin [02:23:18] Yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:23:19] Judges are run out of town. But for the most part, ironically, Brigham Young and the Mormons like Abraham Lincoln. And when he is assassinated, they hold this vigil for him and they talk very patriotically about him. He was very strategic and knew how to sort of manage the Mormons. But after him, then, you know, the government, now it's the 1860s and polygamy and Mormons have all this territorial power again.

John Dehlin [02:23:48] So basically the Civil War saved Brigham Young and Mormon polygamy for at least.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:23:52] Yeah. And he actually gets. Brigham Young actually gets permission to muster the Nauvoo Legion from Abraham Lincoln. He puts in a request for a bigger army. And I think Lincoln gives him 150something soldiers. And they're able to do. They're basically asked by Abraham Lincoln to do a patriotic duty, which is protect the telegraph line. So the telegraph arrives. Brigham Young does the first telegraph interchange with Abraham Lincoln and it shows that, listen, we're loyal to America, please let us be a state. Abraham's like, no, absolutely not. But we'll let you protect the telegraph lines from indigenous resistance. And so Brigham Young shows a show of loyalty and that's how they. Mormons kind of were involved in the Civil War. They protect the telegraph lines for a little while.

John Dehlin [02:24:44] I have no idea Brigham Young and Abraham Lincoln had any correspondence or, you know.

Bryan Buchanan [02:24:50] Well, Mr. Tim Ballard would like you to believe that's because Abraham Lincoln read the Book of Mormon. But that's probably not the case. Lincoln is a fascinating case because they are in private, they'll refer to him as Abel Lincoln, and he's just this complete idiot. And.

Bryan Buchanan [02:25:07] But occasionally in public, they will make a semblance of patriotism. The problem is the people back in Washington keep hearing about the private speeches, and the patriotism they know is just a slight veneer. And so Lincoln is constantly being hounded to do something about this. But this is the plow around it method. He doesn't really want to do anything because he has slightly larger fish to fry. So in 1862, the first piece of federal anti polygamy legislation is passed, the Morrill Act. But it's very weak. It really does very little beyond defining bigamy and prohibiting it. But that's about it. It also says a church that believes in polygamy can't hold property more than $50,000.

Bryan Buchanan [02:25:54] There is zero attempt at enforcement, period. But Lincoln can say, hey, look, I passed legislation. I'm doing something about the Mormons. But that's all it is. But what's so wild is then there's this period of detente, really, and nothing happens. Toward the end of the decade, however, the Mormons say, well, hey, you know, there's this law in the books, but you're not really enforcing it. Let's just get rid of it. And Washington is like, oh, yeah, we never did anything about that. Let's think about that. Mormons constantly shoot themselves in the foot in political negotiations. They cannot shut up about things. They bring things up at the wrong time.

Bryan Buchanan [02:26:30] And they keep making their cause so much harder because they don't know how to do politics right. They have some guys that do. They just don't have the ultimate decision abilities that Brigham Young does. And there's these fascinating accounts of how Brigham Young will give a speech, and it has incendiary rhetoric in it. And rather than taking it out of the published version, he says, no, I stand by it, and makes life much harder.

John Dehlin [02:27:01] Did we talk about Thomas Coleman and Dr. Robinson?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:27:05] No, I want to talk about that because this has a polygamy story in it, but it also factors into this polygamy legislation. So this is a story that's not very well known, and I would recommend reading Conal o' Donovan's work on this because it's fantastic. And it was a story that like, it just sticks out in my mind as a really important story. So of course, newspapers, as soon as a month later, after the massacre in California, I think the first newspaper, or maybe it's 1858, Barbara would know, starts publishing about the massacre. Mormons. You know, you go through Mormon territory and you're in danger.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:27:41] Any outsider is in danger. Well, the Mormons don't help themselves. In the 1800s as the government, federal troops are moving out, people are still coming west. They're coming for gold, they're coming for California. They're coming for a variety of reasons. There's the Comstock load. Silver is discovered in Nevada. People are coming out for a variety of reasons and have to come to Utah. And this is bringing a lot of miners, this is bringing a lot of gentiles through Salt Lake. And Brigham Young is finding different ways to uphold power, uphold the whistle trade, uphold a lot of the commerce that's going through. And there is this man named Dr.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:28:20] King Robinson, who is a doctor, a Civil War surgeon that comes to Utah and he decides he's going to stay here. And he falls in love with a young woman who's a Mormon. Her mother was in polygamy and disaffected. And so he marries this young girl. I think she's like in, I don't know, her 20s. She's a marriageable age. And it pisses off the Mormons right away that an outsider is marrying a Mormon girl who's disaffected with polygamy. To make matters worse, he has some money and he purchases. There is a warm springs up kind of by the University of Utah and he purchases it and he's going to make it kind of like a modern spa or an old timey spa.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:29:02] He has a bowling alley I think at the time too. And the Mormons keep burning down his stuff. They burn down his shacks and they, you know, try to stop him from getting all this power and he makes a fuss about it. And so one night he's called out on a doctorly duty and he's murdered right on Main street in cold blood. Nobody at court knows who killed him. This story makes national news. New York Times reports on it. You know, they're murdering non Mormons and the story gets out that he's murdered for marrying a Mormon girl. That's what the story is. And about the same time is a black man named Thomas Coleman.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:29:43] And I just Wanted to highlight his story. So, basically, where Third west is now, there was a community of black Americans living in Utah. A lot of them had been brought here as slaves by their Mormon masters. And Thomas Coleman was one of these people. But they had a little settlement where, you know, they could engage with each other.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:30:06] And this was very common of frontier towns. People would live according to their race in their neighborhoods. Right? So there was a Chinese railroad encampment. There was this. I want to think. I can't remember what they called this, the street. But anyway, Thomas Coleman was there, and he gets in a. In a gunfight with another black man, allegedly over two beautiful black women. And Thomas Coleman ends up shooting and killing this other man. And he goes to prison for it for a short time. And his lawyer is Hosea Stout. Now, Hosea Stout is the murdery, poisony Nauvoo chief of police that we talked about earlier.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:30:44] Now he's a lawyer in Utah and working for the police here. He represents Thomas Coleman. He eventually gets Thomas Coleman out. No one's able to testify. Thomas Coleman's sentence is short. And Thomas Coleman is placed as a servant in Faramore's little.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:31:01] His household. He was the mayor at the time. He's, I think, believe, the nephew of Brigham Young. And he happens to be a servant during the murder of Dr. Robinson and a few other really important things that are going on. And Conal o' Donovan claims that what happens next is the result of Thomas Coleman being a servant and knowing too much. Because what happens next is Thomas Coleman's body is found stripped naked on what is called Ammunition Hill, which is now where the DUP is. The Daughters of the Utah Pioneer Museum, they used to keep all the ammunition up there until it blew up, which one day.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:31:42] But anyway, Thomas Coleman's body is found naked with garment markings carved into his skin. And there was allegedly a note pinned to his skin that said a word to all n words, stay away from white women. But what's strange is he was blood atoned, is his head was almost decapitated. And so it was published that he was killed for, you know, hitting on white women. But Connell o' Donovan believes that he knew too much about these happenings in Salt Lake City, that he was murdered because a grave in the Pauper cemetery was already dug.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:32:16] He believes Conal o' Donovan suggests it's Porter Rockwell that killed him. And I just think it's an interesting story of a lynching that shows the lives of. And the dangers of not being, you know, on the ends of the Mormon territory. Thomas Coleman, who is a pawn, he's brought here as an enslaved man. And then his death is so tragic and gory and who knows why, But I just thought it was an interesting thing that a lot of people don't know about.

John Dehlin [02:32:46] I had no idea people were killed with the garment markings carved into their body.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:32:50] There's some crazy stuff. What's the grave digger that got busted?

Bryan Buchanan [02:32:56] Jean Baptiste.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:32:57] Oh, yeah, that guy. He was digging up bodies and stealing the clothes. And then they had to set all the temple clothes out for their relatives to. I tell you, this is a crazy time in history. Nauvoo. Nothing.

John Dehlin [02:33:11] Yeah. All right, I'm a believer.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:33:14] Good.

Women, Suffrage, and Life Inside Polygamy

John Dehlin [02:33:16] Do you want to talk about Emmaline Wells?

Bryan Buchanan [02:33:18] Have you already Emmeline Wells? So we wanted to highlight the lives of a few specific women growing up in polygamy because they're so interesting. So Emmeline comes from Massachusetts, a fairly well to do family. As a young girl, she's a writer, she's a poet, she loves nature. But then she encounters Mormonism and she marries this other newly made convert and they're married and they're both 15, so that's at least. There's no age gap there, but it's still kind of odd. Then they move to Nauvoo, her family stays there, she comes with her in laws and they go to Nauvoo and her in laws become disaffected very quickly.

Bryan Buchanan [02:33:56] They leave, she's left there with her husband, they're teenagers, she has a baby, the baby dies, and the economy in Nauvoo is so bad that her husband James has to go find work. So he goes first down the river to St. Louis and then he goes to sea where he dies. And so she's now a widow at 17.

Bryan Buchanan [02:34:15] And so she marries Newell Whitney first, who is the bishop there, and fairly well to do as a polygamist wife. As a polygamist wife, the relationship seems to be pretty happy. She loves him, they come to Nauvoo, she has another baby, but then a month later, Whitney dies at fairly young age. So she's now a widow again at 22. And then two years later, she marries Daniel Wells, who had been the non Mormon man friendly to Mormons in Nauvoo, that becomes a convert and then later will be an apostle and eventually in the first presidency. And the relationship isn't great at first first, but over time it improves.

Bryan Buchanan [02:34:51] They grow to love each other, but at the same time, she is becoming one of the most powerful women in Utah. She's a writer. She starts the Woman's Exponent, and she's one of that generation that gets to know national suffrage leaders. So they're on friendly terms with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Stanton. And so they're. And the Woman's Exponent was this periodical that was this really important voice for women with poetry and fiction and articles about theology and all these things by all these important women who are this

John Dehlin [02:35:26] powerful generation and pro suffrage, I'm assuming.

Bryan Buchanan [02:35:29] Yes. And the national leaders don't quite know what to do with them because on the one hand, they're very useful to the movement, but they're also polygamous wives, and that's not great. So they're relationship with the national movement is very complicated. And at different points they are used by the national movement. At other points, they're trying to use the national movement for their own ends. So there's kind of a chess match that's going on.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:35:59] But should we talk about suffrage right now?

Bryan Buchanan [02:36:01] Just like, might as well. It's a good time for it because,

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:36:05] yeah, we'll come back to the Robinson thing because that leads to the Poland Act. But basically, at the same time, polygamy is still a source of public scandal nationally. Right. It's as you know, newspapers will talk about it for a long time. The anti Mormon cartoons are really, really interesting. Was it Chris Blythe that put a book together who did the book of all the anti Mormon cartoons?

Bryan Buchanan [02:36:28] There's someone that I know, Mike Paulus has done some of it. They're wild. It's Brigham Young and his harem and these just wild illustrations. They're very entertaining.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:36:40] So this gets used in suffrage because at the same time, you have women on the east coast who, you know, the Seneca Convention and all these things. Seneca Falls. They want to get the vote for white women. We're talking about white women and they decide. A strategyan activist strategy would be to test the vote in territories and see how it goes. It seems like a safe sale to the white men that are in power if they can test the vote. So women technically get the vote in Wyoming first, but only in local elections. It's women in Utah that actually cast the first ballot. It's Brigham Young's. Is it niece?

Bryan Buchanan [02:37:27] Daughter, I believe.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:37:27] Is it his daughter?

Bryan Buchanan [02:37:28] Daughter, I think so. A woman related to Brigham Young.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:37:33] And her name is.

Bryan Buchanan [02:37:35] Her name is Seraph Young.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:37:38] Seraph Young. Gosh. We should know that. I promise. I know. It's just. It's getting late and there's a lot of names. Seraph Young cast A first ballot. So what happens is the suffragists, the suffragists in the east say, okay, let's give it to those poor oppressed women in Utah. They are going to surely vote polygamy down. So if we give it to them, they'll vote polygamy down, and then we'll have solved the Republican Party's promise. We will say women have voted their way out of polygamy. So they meet with, you know, Emmeline Wells and Eliza R. Snow and all of these leaders, and they, you know, we have a lot of feminist writings about how women should have their own voice.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:38:17] And it's really powerful stuff that myself as a Mormon feminists really found a lot of strength in. You can't say that these women didn't have autonomy. Look, look at Emmaline Wells. Great reading. She loves polygamy, by the way. Like what? Like, how does this happen?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:38:33] Turns out Emmeline Wells hated it privately, but publicly she was a big defender of it. Her. My heart broke when I read her journals. Hers and Martha Hughes Cannon and all these other women. But anyway, so they give the vote to women in Utah. Women don't vote the way they want, so they end up taking it away with one of the acts to get rid of polygamy. But polygamy was one of the reasons white women got the right to vote.

John Dehlin [02:38:59] Whoa. Before it was taken away.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:39:01] Before it was taken away. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:39:03] And the year window of that was around, so.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:39:07] Well, we're going to talk about it with the Edmunds Tucker act, which disenfranchised all women in their vote, but.

John Dehlin [02:39:13] Okay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:39:14] Oh, I should know this.

Bryan Buchanan [02:39:15] 1870, I think, is when the votes are actually cast. It seems like Wyoming gets it in 69.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:39:21] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:39:22] 1870 in Utah, where the women vote.

John Dehlin [02:39:24] I was 1871.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:39:25] I think you're right. 1870.

John Dehlin [02:39:26] Okay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:39:27] Lindsay doesn't know the suffragist history.

John Dehlin [02:39:30] It's late.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:39:30] It's late, folks.

John Dehlin [02:39:31] For those who don't know, it's like 11 o' clock at night, so. And we're two and a half hours in, so we're cutting Lindsey some slack. So we talked about Martha Hughes Cannon in the north, and Martha we have not.

Bryan Buchanan [02:39:43] Let's talk about her real quickly because she is such a fascinating story.

John Dehlin [02:39:46] Let's do it.

Bryan Buchanan [02:39:47] So she's born in 1857, right in the middle of the Mormon Reformation, except she's born in Wales.

John Dehlin [02:39:52] Wales.

Bryan Buchanan [02:39:53] So she comes across at the age of three with her family and settles in Salt Lake. And she's one of the few women that actually benefits from Brigham Young. Because what Brigham would do is he would see these. These younger girls or young women who had talents and would often assign them things for the. The building up of the kingdom. So her. He encourages her to learn typesetting. So her first job is a typesetter for the Deseret News.

Bryan Buchanan [02:40:20] And. But her. Her secret desire has always been to be a doctor. And so this is that generation of. Of Ellis Reynolds ship and this first generation that gets sent back east for this great education in medicine at the time. And then they come back and we'll teach classes in midwifery and these kinds of things. So she goes back to. After graduating from the University of Deseret with a degree in chemistry and goes to Michigan.

John Dehlin [02:40:44] Whoa.

Bryan Buchanan [02:40:45] And she gets her MD There. She stays in the area. She eventually will earn four separate degrees. She was really smart.

John Dehlin [02:40:51] What.

Bryan Buchanan [02:40:52] So she comes back to Utah and then becomes the resident physician at the newly created Deseret Hospital. And as part of her work there, she gets to know Angus Cannon, who is.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:41:03] Which really quick women crowdfunded and got this hospital set up. It was Mormon women that did this.

Bryan Buchanan [02:41:09] There's not a lot of good. Well, there's not a lot of good medical care on earth, but at the time, they don't have a lot of organized care. So they set up this hospital, which will be extremely useful.

Bryan Buchanan [02:41:23] And so she meets Angus Cannon, who is the administrator of the hospital. He's the president of the original huge Salt Lake stake, and he's also madly in love with her. So he marries her as a plural wife in 1884. And it would be really hard to pick a worse year to get married as a plural wife. This is when the legislation is really ramping up, and so their life is not fun. They try to keep it quiet. Doesn't work. Angus goes to prison.

Bryan Buchanan [02:41:53] She goes to Europe for a time with her baby, and then after things more or less calm down, then she can come back. And then, of course, she's so famous in later life because she is the first woman elected to a state legislature in the US And Angus is in the same election for the same office.

Bryan Buchanan [02:42:11] He doesn't win. So she's a very famous, fascinating woman. There's our friend John Sillitoe and Constance Lieber publish their correspondence while Angus is in prison. And it's fascinating because, like Emmaline, she's a public defender of polygamy. Privately, she just wants her husband, who she does love, to pay attention to her. And her heart is broken.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:42:35] That broke My heart. That's the one. Like, I, as a Mormon feminist, I was like, hey, we have to respect polygamy, like, women's choice, if they were choosing it. But then, you know, reading Martha Hughes Cannon's defenses of polygamy, you're like, how can you say this woman is an idiot? Like, how can you say she's being coerced into anything? But then you read her diaries and her letter to Angus. He's taking a plural wife that he's courting on a carriage, and she has to see it. And she writes, how do you think I feel when I see you with her? Like, and you can just hear the pain in the correspondence. And I was just like, oh, this was a lot more complicated than their public defenses.

Bryan Buchanan [02:43:17] So theoretical polygamy and lived polygamy are extremely.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:43:22] And it's the same thing with Brigham Young's feminism. I'll point this out. People will be like, brigham Young cared about women and women's education. He sent these women to become doctors. Yeah. He saw the utility and the efficiency in having women do good work because the women were doing awesome work. And he was no dummy. It was like, with anything else, if he saw something that worked, he was going to take advantage of it. And so I don't think he should get any credit for, like, not oppressing women more. But, yeah, she's a rare story. She's fantastic, though.

Bryan Buchanan [02:43:56] And also, sadly, in her case, at the end of her life, she burns a lot of her papers, which is such a shame because those would have been fascinating. But we know enough about her to know Signature just published a brief biography of her. That's very interesting. So she's a fascinating woman, and she's up in the north of Utah at that time.

John Dehlin [02:44:19] Which leads us to Martha Cox.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:44:21] Yeah, I'll just hurry with her. So she was a midwife down in the south, and we have a lot of her journals and incredible stuff, too, so it was interesting. I bring her up because the women in the north and the saints in the north versus Women's the south, and I'm talking about southern Utah. It was a stark, stark difference. And so to see what they did with resources is interesting. But what I really like about a lot of the women in the south is they were mystics.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:44:49] You know, I was. I hope she doesn't mind me saying this, but I was doing Elna Baker's genealogy for her and found out that her grandmother was a tea leaf reader at this time. They would go to her and she would read your tea leaves. There are. Martha Cox was an herbalist and a fantastic diarist. And because of her, we know about several plural wives. I would definitely recommend the Polygamous Wives Writing Club by Paula Kelly Harleen. She talks about a woman in there, Martha included, who they enjoyed the company of their sister wives more than their husbands and were more excited about being sealed to their sister wives and their husbands and saw themselves as natural fits as plural wives because they liked women more than men.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:45:35] And so I think polygamy worked on the few rare occasions if girls liked girls. I think so. Read about that in a polygamous wives writing club. I think that that doctrine made sense to some of those girls and women. And Martha Cox is just fantastic because she shows up in a lot of Juanita Brooks research. So I wanted to highlight her name

John Dehlin [02:45:59] and the end of kind of the early Utah section. You've got here a discussion of the wives of John D. Lee and then a discussion about Dixie and Dixie wine.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:46:11] Well, yeah, I just wanted to talk about that because I. Southern Utah history is a great love of mine. Thanks to Juanita Brooks and a lot of her work and reading a bunch of the journals she translated.

John Dehlin [02:46:21] And thanks to Warren Jeffs and his good work. I'm sorry, that's dark.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:46:24] No, no, no. But I mean, actually, Juanita Brooks did work with Shore Creek. It's interesting that comes into play and we'll certainly talk about that. No, Dixie, Dixie was the area that Mormons called southern Utah because they grew cotton. And so they likened it to Dixie of the South.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:46:41] It's now being. There's a debate on, you know, appropriating that term and how dangerous that is. Especially as, you know, there's a lot of different people and cultures now that live in southern Utah. It's not just white Mormons, but it was called Dixie for a long time. And what a lot of people don't know is that early on in the 1850s, Brigham Young sends, you know, hundreds of people to southern Utah to try to have their own self sustaining economy. They tried the Iron Mission. They thought there might be iron with all the red rock down there. That didn't work out very well. Then they tried cotton because the soil was warmer there and they had very moderate success with cotton.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:47:22] So then they tried silkworms. But the economy that really works is the wine economy. Grapes grew really well there. So the wine economy, yeah, grew fantastically. Tocquerville wine. The Nagle family was called and set apart to run a winery.

John Dehlin [02:47:38] What?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:47:39] And yeah, in the St. George Temple cornerstone is a bottle of Dixie wine.

John Dehlin [02:47:44] What?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:47:45] Dixie wine was quite popular. Mormon leaders loved it, and Brigham Young took advantage of it. Do you get different. You get different takes on how good the wine was. They often sold to the gentile town of Silver Reef, and Gentiles said, you take one swig of Dixie wine and you're out. You're done.

Bryan Buchanan [02:48:05] And so they punished us for that later on.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:48:08] Yeah, we got stuck in Silver Reef. It was a whole thing. And when we did, all the locals said it's because the curse of Brigham Young. He cursed it because it was a gentile town, and they still believe it today. And we know because we got a flat tire there. The curse is real, folks.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:48:23] But, yeah, Dixie wine wine was a huge part of the culture. John D. Lee would have it at his wedding parties. His wife's are really important to me because I've been working with my writing partner, Mandy Olson, on several projects involving them. And so I just. I know his wife's very well. One of his friends favorite. One of my favorite women in Mormon history of all time is Ann Gorge Lee, who was one of the child brides of John D. Lee, one of his last wives, his last wife. She ends up becoming kind of her own Calamity Jane. She leaves him and starts dressing like a man.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:48:58] And she writes this crazy autobiography, which a lot of scholars have said is, you know, full of inaccuracies, and it is a wild story, but. And I've been chasing it line for line for line to see what's accurate, and way more of it's accurate than not. But she does have stories like Porter Rockwell and Heber Kimball throwing bodies of virgins in the endowment house basement, stuff that is probably absolutely not true. But she has a lot of stories that are true, and it just sounds crazy. She claims that she rode with, oh, what's Geronimo And Billy the Kid and all these kind of crazy stuff.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:49:39] But really, her narrative is a trauma narrative. You know, she went through a lot. Her parents are said to have traded her for some calves or ewes, depending on whose story you believe, for John D. Lee. And there's another story that says that her parents were trying to get out during the 1850s and 60s. They knew that it was dangerous, and they knew about the castration of a local boy. And to save their lives, Ann got traded for John Deeley. So who knows whose story to believe, but I think his wife's. Again, John Deeley shows up a lot in my talk because of Juanita Brooks. And then I'm writing her biography.

John Dehlin [02:50:15] Going back to the vineyard. Really quick. First of all, why isn't there vineyards in. Well, let me just a tiny bit of history. Like those who have never been Mormon or orthodox, but believe you Mormons that don't know their history are going to say what Brigham Young wine. Everyone should know that. That while the word of wisdom, you know, sort of like said avoid strong drink, which I think was meant to be kind of hard liquor, seems like beer and wine were allowed even by the, you know, DNC89.

Wine, the Word of Wisdom, and Southern Utah

Bryan Buchanan [02:50:50] Wine of your own make.

John Dehlin [02:50:52] Right.

Bryan Buchanan [02:50:52] Is more or less acceptable.

John Dehlin [02:50:54] Yeah. So Mormons drink alcohol all the way through the early, you know, like with approval. All the way through the early 1900s. Correct.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:51:04] Heber J. Grant was an alcoholic.

John Dehlin [02:51:06] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:51:07] And he was prophet in the 50s.

John Dehlin [02:51:09] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:51:10] Born in the 50s. Yeah. 1856.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:51:11] No. When was he prophet? 1940s.

Bryan Buchanan [02:51:13] Oh, he's 1918-45.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:51:16] 45, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:51:18] So this whole thing about Mormons don't drink alcohol and it's like completely, completely forbidden. That's a 20th century, early to mid 20th century development. So. So people shouldn't be surprised that there were high level Mormon leaders in the 1800s, not only drinking alcohol, but like having distilleries or, or vineyards.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:51:43] Joseph F. Smith would get drunk and beat his wife's.

John Dehlin [02:51:45] Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:51:46] Wife.

John Dehlin [02:51:47] Right. Yeah. But then why didn't those vineyards be persist. Because there's no Sonoma sort of equivalent here in southern Utah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:51:55] Tell that to Short Creek.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:51:58] There's actually a wine tour and there are vineyards. Most of them are. But like in Short Creek when we went. So there are. I sorry that I don't remember your names, but I toured their vineyard. So there's some ex morms that went and bought Rulin Jeffs's vineyard in Short Creek and have started their own vineyard. So you can go buy Short Creek wine. I've had it. It's. I grew up Mormon. I don't know wine, so I have no idea if it's good, but it tasted great to me.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:52:28] There's a whole wine industry that's, that's growing now and I just helped the Salt Lake Tribune do a profile on Dixie wine. So hopefully that'll be coming out soon because the history is kind of crazy. It became a really robust economy and for a while it was the only economy that really sustained all of Mormonism. They were shipping it up in huge batches and there are funny stories about, you know, peddlers would.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:52:53] You were supposed to get a permit through the territory, so through your bishop, basically. So the bishop storehouse was actually making their own wine and selling it. You could pay tithing and grapes. And the bishops there are lecturing their congregants on not giving their best grapes for tithing.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:53:10] So they're making bad wine. But the stories are funny of these peddlers coming with gallons of wine up to Salt Lake City, and they don't even make it through Parowan before they've sold all their wine or drunk it themselves. So, yeah, it became a problem. The Kimball boys, like I said, were known for getting into trouble and causing damage.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:53:28] Brigham Young was getting really irritated. And one of the stories that we talk about in this article I'm talking about is that you used to have sacramental wine in a goblet that you would pass around, and people became drunks and, you know, they would take the whole swig of the wine. And so Brigham Young instituted the little sacrament cups, and that's where we get those from. So you couldn't chug the whole thing. And then you have stories of boys in town that would show up only for communion, you know, just to get a little free wine. So it definitely was a huge part of the culture.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:54:04] Juanita Brooks has this great story that when she was a little kid, she was at her grandma's house and she hurt herself. She, like, burned her finger or something. And her grandma gives her. Oh, she had a stomachache, and her grandma gives her some cherry cordial wine. And pretty soon Juanita Brooks becomes drunk, and her dad comes in and the grandma's crying, I got your daughter drunk. And he sits Juanita down and he says, listen, Juanita, there's some who can take it and. And some who can't. And you're one who can't, so stop. So, yeah, it was a cultural thing for a long, long time, and hard for a lot of people to break, including Mormon prophets.

John Dehlin [02:54:42] So do we know what got rid of the vineyard?

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:54:46] Yeah. So the economy shifted, and part of it was as Brigham Young was losing territorial power, he wasn't able to regulate it as much and regulate the permits. And so there's this influx of. In the silver mining towns where they're starting to make their own town, their own wine, and it sort of waters down the industry. And so then they can't control the. The.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:55:09] The quality of it as much. And so eventually they shut it down. The Tocquerville winery is still there. You can see the Tocquerville big house where they had a big, huge gallon. They were instituted by the church. I Think I want to say, gosh, it's been a while, like, 1880s, that the bishop Storehouse shuts it down because there were just other economies that made more sense. So it really became an economic thing. It wasn't like a spiritual thing. But Brigham Young was irritated. He thought, you know, people that got drunk were weak. So he didn't like weakness of any sort.

John Dehlin [02:55:43] Okay, well, what I think we'll probably do, since we're coming up on three hours, is have this part two be kind of polygamy under Brigham Young, and then we'll talk later and figure out how to. How to partition the next part. So some of the things we have left, we've talked about the moral Anti bigamy Act of 1862. Were you going to introduce the Poland act of 1874? And, yeah, we could do the access

The Edmunds Acts and the Road to the Manifesto

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:56:14] to the manifesto and then call that an episode.

John Dehlin [02:56:17] Yeah, yeah. Or we can just end Brigham Young's death. Whatever you want.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:56:22] Yeah. Let's get into polygamy legislation really quick. So the Poland act is important. So I talked about Robinson's death, Mountain Meadows Massacre. Even though the country is dealing with the Civil war, they're like, oh, shoot, we let the Mormons get away from us. So they send. Even they send a regiment in the Civil war to try to get power back. And it takes a while. And this is where you have these. These judges, these runaway judges. Mormons try all kinds of things. In fact, there's thisi'm forgetting the details, but at one point, Mormons carve a bunch of fake wooden guns and threaten one of the judges with these fake guns that they don't know are fake, and they think that they're gonna go to war.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:57:01] Mormons were driving out judges. They had a good time doing this. And so the government comes up with the Poland act, which basically says it basically takes over the probate courts from territories it's targeted at the Mormons. And like I said, the bishops are running the probate courts at this time. The high councils are running the probate courts. And so this allows federal marshals to come west and take control. And so this happens in all the territories. And this actually gives some teeth to the Bigamy act, which has no teeth at all. But it basically says federal marshals can come into the town. And once that starts happening, we see the succession of several acts, the Edmonds act and then the Edmunds Tucker act, which really has teeth.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:57:48] But the Poland act is important because what it does is it allows the feds to come in and start arresting People. And that's why Brigham Young is allegedly. It opens up accountability for Mountain Meadows Massacre, which he again skirts out of.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:58:04] You know, they investigate Robinson's death. But of course, Mormons are really good and wise to this, and they don't, you know, whenever they need a witness, all of a sudden no witnesses are to be found. You know, nobody knows anything about anything.

John Dehlin [02:58:18] Yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [02:58:20] Do you want to talk about the Edmunds act and Edmunds Tucker?

Bryan Buchanan [02:58:23] So Poland starts it, and then in the intervening years, it's still not really being enforced, because part of it is Mormons are arguing it's not constitutional, and they want that tested. So that's where we get the Reynolds case in the middle. An absolutely landmark exercise of religion case. And so finally, in 1879, the Supreme Court upholds it and says, yes, all of this legislation is constitutional, so let's get moving. So in 1882, the Edmonds act is passed, which allows them to really start arresting people. And it's at that point that we start seeing actual arrests and imprisonments happen. And part of that is because they.

Bryan Buchanan [02:59:05] They create a new offense called unlawful cohabitation. Because proving a polygamous marriage is really difficult. You have to know a date, you have to know an efficient. All these kinds of things. And those records are either not being kept or they're not available.

Bryan Buchanan [02:59:20] But unlawful cohabitation is a lot easier. That's a pregnancy. I saw them go. Him go into her house. Testimony alone can do that. And so that's when we start seeing arrests happen, but not enough. And so then in 1887, they get really tough. And this one more or less disenfranchises all practicing polygamous Mormons.

Bryan Buchanan [02:59:46] But it starts to hint at even just belief in polygamy is enough. And that's really scary. That's when the walls really start coming in. And part of that I think we'll talk about next time is what's not what's happening in Utah, it's what's happening in Idaho that's driving this. And that's part of the broadening of Mormon studies, is looking at other Mormon settlements in the West. And at points, what's happening in Idaho is more important because it's driving Utah. So we'll get to that next time. That's a fascinating story.

John Dehlin [03:00:17] So what is the Brigham Young, Hampton

Bryan Buchanan [03:00:21] and Sting that's such a fascinating story.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:00:24] So the prostitutes we promised.

Bryan Buchanan [03:00:27] Earlier, she mentioned Ann Gorge's autobiography. It's published in a book called Playing With Shadows that also includes the Brigham Young Hampton story. So this is another Brigham getting spurned story, because By Hampton's mother is being courted by Brigham Young, who loses. And so his bronze medalist, he gets to name the kid. And he says, name him Brigham Young Hampton. So in Utah, he's a policeman, and he is actually indicted for the King Robinson murder.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:00:52] And really quick, he's not Brigham Young's biological son, but he's sort of an adopted son. So we're going to call him By Hampton because Brigham Young. Hampton is confusing, but he's still, even though he's not biological, Brigham Young really takes him in and gives him power and treats him as such.

Bryan Buchanan [03:01:09] His mother is sealed to Brigham Young for time after his father dies. So Brigham will take him under his wing. So he's involved in several cases as a policeman that are rough. There's one, they're constantly breaking up saloons and brothels. But in one case, the madams of the brothel sue the city. And they win a judgment, a big one. And so the police are constantly doing all these things that get him in trouble. And then in the 1870s, they go in and break up a saloon. And the man's name is Engelbrecht. And he, this court, this case gets kicked up, kicked up until they, in 1872, rule that this is back to Judge James McKean.

Bryan Buchanan [03:01:49] That's button heads with Brigham Young and all the way that the juries had been formed before that are now illegitimate. And so hundreds of cases are thrown out, including by Hampton's case. So he wins this one. Mormons love this. But then the big one comes in the 1880s, and there's a shift in the power because Brigham Young, his protector namesake, is dead, and Mormon leaders are now no longer going to protect him. So what Brigham Young Hampton's idea is, is let's get back at some of these hated federal officials by doing a brothel sting. So he hires two sex workers to do some detective work for him, and they try to nail some of these guys that are visiting the brothels, and they get a marshal up in Ogden.

Bryan Buchanan [03:02:36] But the problem is, is the DA doesn't want to prosecute any of them. And in fact, they turn it around and they accuse Brigham Young, Hampton of running his own brothel. Oh, and so there's this great account that he's held not in jail, but at the courthouse by his friend in the police. And hundreds of visitors come in. They bring him all sorts of alcohol. Back to our alcohol discussion.

Bryan Buchanan [03:02:58] And he finally gets released on this, but now he has a bunch of debt because he's got to pay these detectives the sex workers that he had working for him, and church leaders throw him under the bus. And then in the 1890s, there's another case where he leases a building from the Brigham Young Trust Company that holds all these buildings from Brigham Young's estate. But there's a lot of shadiness. The red light district in Salt Lake is running largely on lands from the Brigham Young Trust Company, And Brigham Young Jr. Is furious about this. So what happens? Brigham Young leases this building. Brigham Young Hampton leases this building, and then a part of it is sublet to another woman, who then sets up this really elaborate brothel in the building owned by the Brigham Young Trust Company.

John Dehlin [03:03:43] So many Utah brothels.

Bryan Buchanan [03:03:45] And Plum Street.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:03:47] Old Plum street, yes, down.

Bryan Buchanan [03:03:49] Yeah, down in the red light district there. And Hampton artists.

John Dehlin [03:03:52] Wait, is that in Salt Lake?

Bryan Buchanan [03:03:53] Downtown, yeah, it's by the.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:03:55] Carl's Jr.

John Dehlin [03:03:56] Okay.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:03:57] Yeah, there's a chicken place. It's now not a brothel, but it

Bryan Buchanan [03:04:02] used to be, if you know the right person. Maybe in the back.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:04:06] Well, they had the whole stockade, which Brigham Young actually, the. The government puts sort of west of Salt Lake City. They try like, okay, we can't control this. Why don't we.

Bryan Buchanan [03:04:16] Let's have an organized resolution.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:04:17] Have an organized. Yeah, that was a good time. Until it wasn't.

Bryan Buchanan [03:04:22] And then he argues to the judge, well, I didn't know that this woman was subletting this part of the building. And the judge agrees with him and releases him. So he continually petitions for help for his deaths. And finally, toward the end of his life, the church gives him $3,600, more or less, to shut him up and get rid of him.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:04:40] And isn't one of his plural wives Hannah Tatfield, King's daughter? His. His plural wives by Hampton's plural wives are a mess. This is. People are, like, think of their polygamous ancestors as getting along. Brigham Young Hampton gets attacked by one of his wives in the street in Salt Lake City. She tries to claw his eyes out.

John Dehlin [03:05:00] Whoa.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:05:01] So the first wife is her daughter to him. So, yeah, it was a messy time. I have in my ancestry a plural wife that tried to break the arm of another plural wife over water rights. So it was a. It's not an easy thing. It was the holy principle of God

Bryan Buchanan [03:05:21] scratching and clawing at his clothes in broad daylight on the streets of Salt Lake City.

John Dehlin [03:05:27] Yeah, it was messy.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:05:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:05:29] Yeah. We talked about this a little bit last time, but when I read about my grandmother and great grandmother, grandfather and great grandmothers, and how messy their polygamy was. That's just a few generations removed from me in Franklin and, you know, in, you know, Napoleon Dynamite territory over in Franklin and Preston, Idaho and Logan is super sad, super dark.

John Dehlin [03:05:54] We think that they all, you know, the husband lived with the four or five wives all in a. No, it's like they moved on. Sometimes they abandoned previous wives, like we mentioned. Sometimes the wives would get addicted to something because their lives are so hard. In my great grandfather's case, he had two wives. He was sent on a mission with two wives and then kids died while he was on his mission because the women were super poor and like, didn't have food or medical care. And he was a doctor. Like, it's crazy how awful these stories are.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:06:29] That's why Todd Compton. I can't believe we haven't said his book yet. Todd Compton's book in Sacred Loneliness. The title is so perfect. In Sacred Loneliness, it was mostly lonely and miserable, especially if you were married to a leader, because it meant more women, less time. It's not, I mean, it's not a pretty thing. It's not. It's messy, like you said. Very, very messy.

Brigham Young's Wealth, Legacy, and Final Assessment

John Dehlin [03:06:52] And that's how your polygamy started. You went and just an episode per wife of Joseph Smith, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:06:57] Yeah. I have Todd Compton to thank for that. I highlighted the wife's using his work and he's become such a dear friend and mentor. And I'm just going to plug his book In Sacred Loneliness about the wives of Joseph Smith. And in Sacred the Documents, his new book, he adds even more texture to their stories. So definitely support his stuff. It's great.

John Dehlin [03:07:17] So as we kind of close out this part two about kind of polygamy under Brigham Young. Real quick, how wealthy was Brigham Young and where did he get all his money? This is a really super short, rapid fire question. Anyone know?

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:07:32] So he was wealthy, but his estate was really complicated. I can't give a short answer to this. I'll basically say after his death it was heavily contested and the money ends up going to the church, not to his wife. So which, you know, John Taylor, the Gardo House, all of that stuff. It was a really sore spot for people, but it was something that even Joseph Smith hadn't figured out. Brigham Young becomes a trustee in trust. He learns a little bit from Joseph Smith stuff. So he basically has all the property, but the federal legislation will mess with that. And so that's part of. It's not an easy answer because he's transferring property back and forth and at one point, they're actually renting church property from the government because the government concedes their assets under the new law.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:08:15] So, in theory, he wasn't. The money didn't belong to him. It belonged to the church, but it also belonged to him. But I will say he lived better than most people around him, so he was doing okay.

Bryan Buchanan [03:08:30] That was one of the many legacies of Joseph Smith, is where's the line between personal property and trustee and trust property? And that's something that Emma had to deal with. The big mess that happens after Brigham Young's death is you have a couple family members who take it to civil court to try to deal with it. And there had been a committee appointed of church leaders to try to handle it. But then these guys go an end run to the court system, the real court system, and that both pisses off the church and the committee, but also drags it out for years and years and years, and it's not resolved to anyone's liking.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:09:05] The Gardo house was one of the most expensive buildings in Salt Lake City at the time. Brigham Young was building it to be a house to entertain, you know, dignitaries and everything. And he had his favorite wife, Amelia Folsom, who never had children. She was very dignified and beautiful and wore fancy dresses. She was gonna be the hostess. So she lived in the Gardo house. I mean, it was opulent. And after he dies, Amelia's basically kicked out by John Taylor. He was like, no, no, no. This is my house now. It belongs to the church. And that was an example of what Brian was just talking about. She kind of gets kicked out, and. Too bad. You're out of luck. Your husband's dead, New guy's in town.

John Dehlin [03:09:41] Is this Gardo house still around?

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:09:43] No, it burned down, unfortunately.

John Dehlin [03:09:45] Where was it?

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:09:47] It's downtown. It was kind of by where City Creek is now. You can go down to the DUP and they have a model of it, which is worth looking at. And there are some surviving photos. It's spectacular. And John Taylor uses it in the underground to hide out. But it's glorious. It's such a tragedy that we've lost it, because the architecture was really interesting.

John Dehlin [03:10:09] So did Brigham Young's wives get the short end of the stick after he died?

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:10:14] Oh, women always did. Women always did. This is a problem with polygamy now, and this is why people I fought to help. I spoke out to decriminalize polygamy, and people are like, you want to legalize polygamy? Polygamy will never be Legalized. It's a nightmare to do it. Because if you do that, if you legalize it, what does it mean for property? What does it mean for inheritance? These women, at the end of the day, you saw the brethren do this all the time. It was convenient to have these wives as their wives when it was and when it wasn't, they'd be like, it's not a legal marriage. Oops, sorry, it doesn't belong to you. And this happens to a lot of women.

John Dehlin [03:10:47] So that's sad. So did other subsequent prophets take on Brigham Young's wives as plural wives and that tradition continued. Brian, your shagging your head.

Bryan Buchanan [03:10:56] No, not really. They more or less just kind of live their own lives. Part of that is Brigham Young is 76 when he dies, whereas Joseph Smith is 38.

John Dehlin [03:11:07] So the wives were older.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:11:08] And all these guys had tons of wives. At this point, the doctrine, the theology had changed quite a bit. At this point, Brigham Young had developed the Adam God theory. We didn't even talk about that, but basically that people didn't need to do that anymore. Amelia Folsom. There's this weird thing. If anyone out there can solve this problem for me. So I'm a Levitt. Like Juanita Brooks would come from the Levitt line. There's this interesting ceiling that Levitt family claim that Amelia Folsom was sealed to a Levitt later on in life. I can't find any records, so I'd be curious of that. So some of them did get resale, sealed, or married. You know, married again because some of them were younger. But, yeah, no, Brigham Young kept his wives, even got posthumously sealed to Martha Brotherton and Anna Eliza Young and the women that spurned him. He showed them in the end.

John Dehlin [03:12:04] That's gross.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:12:05] Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's gross.

John Dehlin [03:12:07] Okay. So speaking of Brigham Young's grossness, I think from social media, you get the. The sense that. Lindsay, you don't. Brigham Young's not your favorite dude. That's why I made that joke before. If you. If you had to summarize, like, your main. If you had to summarize your main beefs with Brigham Young and you could also talk about his virtues. I'd love to hear that. Just a way to end this episode. And, Brian, I'll invite you to add in whatever you want to add. Do you. Because, I mean, you know, you don't love the guy, right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:12:37] No. And part of it, I will acknowledge this is where my bias is. It's. Part of it, is he's a scapegoat. For a lot of my anger, it's easy for me to blame him. A lot I have seen and witnessed in my position at Sunstone and year of polygamy and doing this work with you as you have, too, so much pain stared into the abyss so long that it stares back, you know, and sometimes I have to take breaks because it's the pain and the legacy of this can be so awful.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:13:06] And so when I hear people talk about he was a great comic colonizer, I'm like, are we bragging about that now? Like, yeah, he was really good at dominating people. Good for him. You know, he was a mob boss. He ran things like a mob boss. So good job for being a mob boss. And when Mormons extol his virtues, too often they're extolling his crimes. They're like, he was really good at defrauding the government. He was really good at getting out of this scrape. He was really good at, you know, this thing. And I'm just like, you guys, come on. He was a good organizer.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:13:37] He was a good colonizer. I mean, to pull off what he did with all the things against him, I guess that's a weird hero's journey in a way. But, my gosh, is that what we're going to hold up? And we do. And that's why Mormonism still hurts people. That's why the doctrine is still so painful. It's a violent frontier religion, and I'm sorry, it doesn't have to be. Everyone I know and love is Mormon and is affected by stuff that Brigham Young has done. And so, yeah, I'm mad at the guy, probably unfairly so, because a lot of the good things that I know and love about my community comes from some of his decisions, too.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:14:16] And I have to begrudgingly acknowledge that. But that guy knew how to wield power as a weapon. And, gosh, he brought so much pain and harshness into our theology and called it love. And I don't think I'll ever forgive him for that, and I don't think I have to. And if that colors my work, so be it. But I have sat through hundreds and hundreds of hours of people trying to put a pretty face on his terrible ideas and his pain and his misuse of power.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:14:54] And I'm going to claim this as my position. Like, I can acknowledge that he formed and made me, and I can resent that as well. You know, I think his harshness called love is dangerous. And I still see the impacts today. And every time we make excuses for him and try to hold him up as some champion of good. I can show you a hundred, you know, buckets of tears that he's caused and created. So that's where I stand on him.

John Dehlin [03:15:29] He's kind of notorious for his statements about black people that are horrendous. I mean, some of the most horrendous statements about black people come from Brigham Young. He also said really horrible things about women and their appearance and, you know, them as property. Right?

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:15:45] Here's the thing. We talk about this all the time. The thing that was so interesting about him is he was funny. He would say the most horrible things, but he would say it in a funny way. And when you do that, I mean, it's the Oscar Wilde quote that I think about all the time. Like, tell them the truth, but make them laugh, or they'll kill you. Brigham Young did that, but inverted it for evil, right? Like, he would say the most horrible things, but you'd have to laugh. It was clever. Brigham Young was a clever dude in all the ways, and so he did all of these horrible things, and we.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:16:15] We laughed. And we started to laugh so much that we stopped noticing how terrible it was. And the problem with modern Mormonism is that we never. Because we never completely repudiate any of this stuff. It still lingers. And so you have folks like me who deal with LDS people. These are LDS people who live in fundamentalist viewpoints and lifestyles. And I have family members who are like this, where they will still use Brigham Young's ideas, and there's nothing to stop them because there's nothing to counteract it. And if you have Brigham Young, who is a prophet that says something, and there's no prophet that's coming out and saying he was wrong, which very few people are, then the danger of the frontier still remains.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:16:59] And even though we hide it and we try to say, oh, we don't teach that anymore, the journal discourses, we don't know until there's firm denunciation of these doctrines, they're gonna still linger. And they still linger. And we see them in fundamentalist communities, and I see them in my own life. And again, I talk about Brigham Young, and people will be like, you're biased. Because he was a really. He was a badass. He came. He came across so much, you know, resistance. And look at how he did that. And I'm like, okay, dude, if that's what you want to hold up as success, good. But to me, power is not violence.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:17:37] It's not domination. Power is abundance and sharing and kindness and Vulnerability in spite of everything. And Brigham Young was the opposite of that almost every time. So to me, he's a Rorschach for how we value values. And too many Mormons still think he's great. And he was really good at colonizing, I'll give you that. But I'm sorry, I don't think that that's a good thing.

Reassessing Brigham Young as a Historical Figure

John Dehlin [03:18:05] So, as we see, like, Confederate statues go down, I'm sure you have an opinion on if Russell M. Nelson came to you, a Mormon prophet. Russell M. Nelson came to you and said, should we rename byu? You know, Provo, byu, Idaho, byu, Hawaii? Should we come up with a new name and not have it be named after the man, Brigham Young? And I'm sure you have thoughts about that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:18:28] I have a hard time because I'm a white lady, right? So, like, I'm not hurt in the same way by, like, the racism of Abraham Smoot or Brigham Young. So I don't know that I get to have an opinion on that. I will say for the things that he has said about women or polygamy or the stuff. In the ways that he has hurt me directly, just the mobile stuff, too, or as an ally, you know, in the ways that he's hurt the women in my life. Think about my mother's, my grandmother's, the pain in our family because of doctrines like his.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:18:57] I'm not one, and I'm not saying this is right. This is where I'm at. I'm not one for erasing history. So I'd rather, instead of trying to erase that they happened, we acknowledge that they happen and we deal with it like, how much more powerful would the church be? Rather, I don't need them to rename anything. I need them to start acknowledging, and I need them to start acknowledging what happens today and, like, how it impacts us today and how we're still complicit and how we still extol it as a virtue. That's the problem. It's not that the man existed or he did bad things.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:19:29] Lots of people have done bad things. It's how we contextualize it, how we erase it, how people are sitting out there listening and criticizing how we're talking about this because I'm saying my real opinions and saying, oh, we can't listen because that's biased. Everybody is biased. This history is high stakes and it makes matters and it hurts people. And every time that we make excuses for these men hurts. And so, no, I don't want them erased. I want them held up for what they were. I want a more holistic history. To me, that's the answer. Maybe erasing them is the answer.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:20:02] Erasing. That hasn't helped me. You know, I was doing a documentary on a Mormon fundamentalist that I. You'll see coming out in a little while. And I was trying to look up their history, and they were erased from the family search. And it was so frustrating because I couldn't find anything on them. I don't want to erase the bad stuff. I want us to talk about the bad stuff still.

John Dehlin [03:20:27] Emmeline Wells University. I like the sound of that. And I like the sound of Martha Hughes Cannon University.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:20:32] Hey, yeah, See?

John Dehlin [03:20:33] I mean, so there's one in Provo, there's one in Rexburg, and there's one in. In Hawaii. You got three women's names. Maybe Juanita Brooks University. Could that be.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:20:41] Can they wear overalls, though? Like, what would. Emily.

John Dehlin [03:20:44] What about purses? Shoulder strap with the purse.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:20:46] I mean, it's just like. It's so sad to me. My heart breaks. Like, people will say that I'm disloyal to our people, but I'm loyal to Mormonism. This is why I still care about it. I'm the most loyal. I want us to be good. And I'm not saying I'm perfect. Like, I've had a very messy life myself, thanks to the bad values I was brought up on that we called good and, you know, honest. And as we unpack all of this, like, it's hard, but I don't need these guys to be perfect. I don't need Mormonism to be perfect. I just need us to have better conversations about it.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:21:19] And I think we struggle with that so, so much. And that's what we're trying to do. I think anyone that's trying to do better history is a good thing because it has real impacts today. And I think it's impacted everyone that I know and probably that you know, too.

John Dehlin [03:21:40] Mic drop. All right, Brian, I'd love to hear your summative thoughts for this episode.

Bryan Buchanan [03:21:45] This is not my wheelhouse, but I'll throw in a couple things.

John Dehlin [03:21:49] You mean sharing thoughts and feelings?

Bryan Buchanan [03:21:50] Well, just the application of it is.

John Dehlin [03:21:53] Lindsay's not her head yet.

Bryan Buchanan [03:21:54] Less where I'm.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:21:56] Brian had a great Mormon experience, so he's just like, I'm.

Bryan Buchanan [03:21:59] I'm. I'm approach it, and that's part of it too.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:22:02] But he tolerates me. So he loves you all.

Bryan Buchanan [03:22:04] I. I am. At this point, I'm less. I'm. I'm very history focused. But about bringing.

John Dehlin [03:22:12] But you've got to have. Certainly you have feelings as you're. You're a feeling guy. Sure. But you're just saying it doesn't belong.

Bryan Buchanan [03:22:18] Well, you're like, damn, that's not my strength. Definitely not. But Brigham Young's great success, if you'd call it that, is holding amormonism together. He does hold Joseph Smith's legacy together. The problem is, is that necessarily a good thing? And the means by which that happens frequently are not good. And I would be fascinating to see if they did rename byu. Who would you choose as the name? That would be a fascinating discussion. I'd love to see that play out. Yeah, that's.

John Dehlin [03:22:57] I say, how about B.H. roberts? No, it needs to be a woman. Needs to be a woman.

Bryan Buchanan [03:23:00] That's the thing is you're gonna have an endless stream of problematic figures. The question is, are they less problematic enough? And his talents are much better suited to that. That Mormonism of hands and feet, of moving people from one place to the next. When he becomes Brigham Young the theologian, Brigham Young the policymaker, his talents are not there.

John Dehlin [03:23:26] He would admit that. Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:23:27] So says you.

Bryan Buchanan [03:23:29] He did. And so. But the problem is, the fruits of Brigham Young the theologian and Brigham Young the policymaker last to a length of time and duration and a degree far beyond where they should have. And so that's where he really becomes problematic as theologian, as policymaker. And I think that's pretty undeniable.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:23:56] As Christina Rossetti says, make Adam God again. Is that what you're saying?

Bryan Buchanan [03:24:00] We'll talk about that. Which we skipped over when we talk about fundamentalist history, because that's where it really comes back to life.

John Dehlin [03:24:06] Okay. And I'm confused, because I remember reading in David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism that between Joseph Smith And David O. McKay, none of the presidents of the church, I guess, took on the title as prophet. Is that wrong? Because then you got Brigham Young saying, I was speaking as a man, now I'm speaking as a prophet.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:24:29] I actually have a date where he was ordained as one. So I can tell you.

John Dehlin [03:24:33] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [03:24:33] Tracking the evolution of terminology and ideas is very difficult. And that's the kind of those sort of, like, the marriage rates during the Reformation is the kind of thing that very well could be. It's just that to say something like that requires a lot. And I'm definitely not going to accuse Greg of not doing his homework.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:24:55] And do I want to break our promise and use my notes?

John Dehlin [03:24:58] Oh, yeah, of course you do.

Bryan Buchanan [03:24:59] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:25:00] And I. I May I could be misquoting Greg.

Bryan Buchanan [03:25:02] No, no, no, that's def. And that's, that's become a very common thing people bring up from that book.

John Dehlin [03:25:07] Okay. Okay. It's probably I, I, it's certainly more complicated than that.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:25:13] Yeah, yeah. Because I know he was ordained as prophet Saran Ravelator in one of the meetings. Brigham Young was.

John Dehlin [03:25:22] Okay, yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:25:23] Well in the 1850s.

Bryan Buchanan [03:25:25] Well that's a conference sustaining. That's the terminology they used. I think his gets to more like in, in public settings, newspaper coverage, church coverage, that kind of thing. Using that specific term.

John Dehlin [03:25:38] Yeah. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [03:25:39] Is what Great.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:25:40] Interesting. I didn't know that. I've read the book and I did that didn't stick out to me.

Closing Thoughts and Guest Resources

John Dehlin [03:25:45] Well, I want to end this episode like we ended the last one. I want to give you both a chance to kind of plug all the things that you guys that work on and that mean a lot to you. Brian, I'll let you go first this time.

Bryan Buchanan [03:25:59] So let's talk about some books that were useful today for the territorial period. David Bigler's Forgotten Kingdom is a very useful book for the role that women played in that part of history. Again, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's House Full of Females. Excellent book for Brigham Young. John Turner's biography of him is excellent. I really, really liked that one.

John Dehlin [03:26:25] And is Arrington's kind of out of Leonard's was good.

Bryan Buchanan [03:26:28] It was a much better biography of Brigham Young by far than anything that ever been out there.

John Dehlin [03:26:34] Right.

Bryan Buchanan [03:26:35] But Turner's is the problem with Arrington's book I think is it shaved off too many of the rough edges of Brigham.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:26:41] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [03:26:42] And I think that's on brand for Arrington. Yeah. John's was better I think at giving a little more accurate picture of Olive. Brigham Young, I really, really like his book. Any of that you come to mind for you books. Yeah.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:26:57] I mean the best book in Mormonism for me will always be Mormon Enigma, the biography of Emma Smith. I really like Kingdom of Nauvoo Ben Parker book. I'm biased because Ben's a good friend of mine and his book American Zion is going to be the new history of Mormonism concise. So any, you know, non Mormons like Ben park stuff is the great like entrance because it just covers all the things. And Todd Compton's stuff of course is great when it comes to this period of history. Any of Will Bagley's Kingdom of the west series. They're very expensive but man those books are fun. They have so many good things in there.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:27:38] He just Playing with Shadows is one of them. If you want to buy one, buy that one because it talks about all the apostasy happening in this time period and all the violence. And it's a really good one. Gosh, this is like making me pick a favorite child. I'd rather pick a favorite child than a favorite book at this time. There's so many good ones. Polygamy and prostitute prostitution. I don't know.

John Dehlin [03:28:03] And if you're gonna buy a Mormon book, buy it from.

Bryan Buchanan [03:28:06] Come to Benchmark. Yeah, we. The Kingdom in the west volumes. We frequently have those used. So that's. It's. It's one of our favorite things is to find people kind of at the beginning of building their library and going down these rabbit holes because then we get to suggest all this fun stuff that they'd never heard of.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:28:26] And definitely listen to our podcast, Sunset Mormon History Podcast.

John Dehlin [03:28:29] And you can, you can also buy books online. You don't have to visit Benchmark.

Bryan Buchanan [03:28:33] You do not. Benchmarkbooks.com give us a call. Yep.

John Dehlin [03:28:37] Yeah, buy your freaking Mormon books from Benchmark Books before you buy it.

Bryan Buchanan [03:28:42] And us.

John Dehlin [03:28:43] Yeah. Because they're doing great work.

Bryan Buchanan [03:28:44] We'll get you signed copies of lots

John Dehlin [03:28:46] of things signed by Will and, And when you come to Salt Lake, go visit Chris and Brian and all the folks. Right.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:28:53] It really feels like the old Mormonism, like the old zcmi, like tithing script. Like we support our own. We go to Benchmark Books. But it really is like it's an institution. It's a crazy, crazy place for tons of books. And you can talk to Brian or Chris who know everything about everything.

John Dehlin [03:29:11] Yep. All right. Okay. You were saying you're polygamy.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:29:15] Sorry, year polygamy. Yes.

John Dehlin [03:29:17] And Mormon is true.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:29:18] Mormon History Podcast. Donate, subscribe.

John Dehlin [03:29:22] How do they donate to that?

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:29:23] Go to sunsun.org leave us a donation. Send sounds.

John Dehlin [03:29:26] Just become a monthly donor.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:29:28] Become a monthly donor. Yes.

John Dehlin [03:29:29] How often you put out Episodes?

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:29:30] I've never been good at self promoting this way. It's a Mormon woman thing in me and you've tried to help me over the years and I just suck at it. I just do. I'm not good at any of this.

John Dehlin [03:29:40] You only putting out regular episodes.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:29:42] We are bi weekly episodes. Bimonthly, bi monthly.

Bryan Buchanan [03:29:45] Yeah, bi weekly every other week.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:29:48] Words are hard. Support. Support Sunset and come to our symposium at the end of July. It's always the last weekend of July. Don't plan your events around it. That's what I would say. Support us. But coming to that, that really helps. You can support Year of Polygamy that supports me directly. And yeah, support Mormon scholars doing really good work, I think, across the spectrum. Don't just buy books from people you agree with. Buy it from historians you disagree with, too.

John Dehlin [03:30:16] So become a monthly donor to Sunstone History Podcast. Sign up for monthly donations to support their monthly content.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:30:24] And just as an earlier call, and this goes to myself, too, let's do our own work. It's easy to sit and point fingers at Brigham Young, but we're left and inherited the impact. So get into therapy. Like, do your own work. Don't let your trauma spill out onto others. And it's very hard to do in life, but it's our responsibility. So let's, you know, change the legacy of our people to something better.

John Dehlin [03:30:54] Beautiful. Well, I know my viewers and listeners are going to love these two parts. And if I can prevail, I would love to have you guys back to talk about post Brigham Young. There's so much more. There's John Taylor, there's Wilford Woodruff. There's the three manifestos. Now, I know about two manifestos. Didn't know there were three. The smooth hearings we're going to talk about. Holy moly. That sounds fantastic. And then we're going to get to all the, all the freaking fundamentalist stuff, right? And other 20th century things.

Lindsay Hansen Park [03:31:27] It's going to be a year of polygamy.

John Dehlin [03:31:31] Well, thanks, Lindsay Hanson park, for joining us again on Mormon Stories. And thanks, Brian Buchanan. Thank you so much. And it's almost midnight, so we Holy

Bryan Buchanan [03:31:43] Ghost goes to bed soon.

John Dehlin [03:31:44] We'll see. We'll talk. Anyway, thanks to you both. Thanks, everyone for viewing and listening. Thanks to Julia and Maven and Gerardo and Brooklyn, and everyone who makes our job at the Open Stories foundation possible, including our board, Clint and Carrie, and everyone who donates to make Mormon Stories possible. We appreciate it for today, support these guys. We'll talk about how you can support us another time. Be good to each other, be kind to each other. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.