William B. Smart,Mormonism’s Last Colonizer: The Life and Times of William H. Smart, Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2008. x, 347 pp. Photos, appendices, bibliography, index, CD-ROM. Cloth: $44.95; ISBN 0874217229

Utah State has been doing a bang up job lately. They are producing high quality volumes in high quality formats. The author and editor, William B. Smart, has worked to produce a wonderful resource.

The fifty journals (over 10,000 holograph pages going up to 1937) and Smart’s personal correspondence are housed in the Marriot Library Special Collections of the University of Utah. By suggestion of Ron Esplin, Smart enlisted the help of a score of family members to transcribe the records. He compiled them and included them as a searchable typescript on a CD-ROM with the book. Perhaps some day an annotated critical version of the diaries will be published, though it may be impractical; but this typescript will facilitate access on a scale that is otherwise impossible. Would that all diaries had similar champions!

It is my hope that more researchers include materials in digital formats with their published works. Ed Kimball’s biography of Spencer Kimball, Lengthen Your Stride, is another wonderful example. I have used the digital media included with the book more that the hardback, which I read. I have already mined Smart’s digital archive for several hours and have found dozens of diary entries germane to my research interests. Huzzah.

Mormonism’s Last Colonizer is definitely worth its price (note that it is significantly discounted at Amazon) and efforts like this should receive pecuniary support so as to encourage similar works in the future.

Michael was twenty-two years old. He married his wife just a month earlier. And I wept. I laid down and I didn’t want to get up. I thought of his mother and father. I thought of his new wife. I thought of my own two sons. He was closer in age to me than only one of my four siblings. I saw him grow from baby to man and I loved him.

Mormon funerals have the reputation of being joyous. We memorialize a full life well spent. The release of death is the culmination, and we are confident in the cosmology which promises the persistence of our sociality. As we drove through the Cascades, I thought about the intersection of Joseph Smith and those recent days. I thought of Joseph’s sermons for the dead. It was perhaps fitting that Joseph’s greatest sermon was occasioned by the death of a man when a bucket fell on his head. As we drove through the eastern deserts of Washington and Oregon, I found no reason to celebrate; his life was not spent.

In the Blue Mountains, I thought of Joseph’s funeral sermon for Judge Adams. He mentioned the “vicissitudes of life, and of death; and the designs and purposes of God, in our coming into the world, our sufferings here, and our departure hence…[and] that it is but reasonable to suppose that God would reveal something in reference to the matter[.]” Then Joseph made a bold assertion: “Reading the experience of others, or the revelations given to them, can never give us a comprehensive view of our condition and true relation to God. Knowledge of these things, can only be obtained by experience in these things, through the ordinance of God set forth for that purpose.”

I have not asked God for an explanation. I’m not sure that I need or want one. I am content to be comforted by the measures that I have received – tying the robes of the priesthood on his broken, lifeless corpse, and feeling the power of God; sitting with my extended family and talking, even laughing; walking through the cemetery, nestled in the Wasatch Front, and naming the dead. These are perhaps a revelation. We are anointed, as Joseph said at Adams’ funeral, “to receive the keys of knowledge, and power, by revelation to [ourselves]” and over those few days, I needed every bit.

The “History of Joseph Smith History” (HJS) version of the KFD or the “Manuscript History of the Church” from which it was prepared, is the textual foundation for all subsequent popular accounts of the sermon. As noted, the HJS was prepared by the Church Historians and as the recent LDS Priesthood/RS lesson manual points out, the leaders of the Church felt very confident in the production. (1) It was reprinted in four other nineteenth-century publications (2); however, aspects of the sermon’s teaching led to several controversies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In the nineteenth century, perhaps the biggest concern was over the teaching of child resurrection. Joseph Smith was recorded as teaching on several occasions some peculiarities of child resurrection, the most famous of which was recorded in the KFD. This controversy was settled when Joseph F. Smith sought out affidavits from Church members that witnessed first-hand Joseph’s teaching and reinterpreted the texts to make them more comfortable with the idea of a just God. For a review of this controversy see my review of child salvation in Mormon thought at BCC.

The twentieth century brought different challenges. As the Church hierarchy struggled to divest itself of no-longer-favored pioneer theologies and systematize Mormon thought for the modern age, the KFD again became a source of controversy.

B. H. Roberts, a member of the First Council of the Seventy, was one of the leading pioneers of Mormonism’s new theology. At the turn of the century, he prepared a multi-year curriculum of study for the Seventy’s quorums entiled, Seventies Course on Theology. In many ways Roberts, who worked in the Historian’s Office and was familiar with Joseph’s early teachings, tried to synthesize Joseph Smith’s teachings with the pioneer theological expansions that remained popular. In doing so he frequently appealed to philosophers and scholars of the day. Stan’s 2008 MHA presentation, which he kindly published at the Juvenile Instructor (part 1 and part 2) is a wonderful study into Robert’s theological dialectic.

Perhaps Roberts’s most lasting contribution to Mormon thought is the renaissance of the eternal existence of humanity. Though he created an entirely new cosmology in the process – the tripartite model (see here and the comments in this post) – Robert’s championed the concept of an eternal, uncreated mind. In his Seventy’s theological course he gave these minds the appellation of “intelligencies” (3).

Subsequent to the theological course work, Roberts was involved in the preparation of two serial publications. The first was Roberts’s preparation of the History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1902-1932). The second was a recurring feature in Americana, a periodical published by the National Americana Society, in which he published forty-two-page installments between July 1909 and July 1915 and which were ultimately aggregated into Roberts’s Comprehensive History of the Church as the centennial history of the Latter-day Saints in 1930.

In 1911 Roberts was preparing volume 6 of the History of the Church, which covered the KFD, and his serialized writings in Americana also referenced some of Joseph Smith’s teachings during the same period. In one article for Americana, Roberts relied heavily on the KFD and the Book of Abraham to systematize Joseph’s teachings that the existence of humanity is eternal. However, when the reading committee, consisting of the two councilors in the First Presidency, reviewed it, Roberts’s ideas were deemed not acceptable. Anthon Lund, First Councilor wrote in his journal:

[August 25, 1911] Today we had Bro Roberts read his article on the Philosophy of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Bro. Penrose made a splendid speech on eternalism opposing the view of Bro. B. Roberts who holds that intelligences were self-existent entities before they entered into the organization of the spirit.

[August 29, 1911] Bro. C. W. Penrose and I listened to Bro. Robert’s reading his concluding chapter on the prophet Joseph Smith. We got him to eliminate his theories in regard to intelligences as conscious, self-existing beings or entities before being organized into spirits. This doctrine has raised much discussion and the inference on which he builds his theory is very vague. The Prophet’s speech delivered as a funeral sermon over King Follett, is the basis of Bro. Robert’s doctrine; namely, where he speaks of mans eternity claim. Roberts wants to prove that man then is co-eqal with God. He no doubt felt bad to have us eliminate his pet theory; but if so he didn’t stick on retaining any of the verses of words we asked. (4)

Three months later, Roberts published the version of the KFD, which he had prepared for volume six of the History of the Church in the Liahona/Elders’ Journal: B. H. Roberts, ed., “The King Follett Discourse: The Kind of Being God is; the Immortality of the Intelligence of Man,” Liahona/The Elders’ Journal 9 (December 5, 1911): 369-379 and 380-382 (PDF Transcript). The Liahona was the organ of the Central States Mission and this printing of the KFD was fundamentally based on the HJS. Minor differences in sentence structure are evident in the comparison (PDF) which I produced to contrast the versions. This printing included not a few typographical errors, but the largest differences in Liahona version are the omission of the section on child resurrection and the addition of Roberts’s footnotes, which frequently cite the scholars that Stan discussed in his MHA presentation.

The First Presidency learned of this printing, and was not pleased. They wrote on December 28 to Joseph A. McRae of the Central States Mission:

Do not print or circulate any more of the King Follett Sermon without hearing from us. (5)

The following week the First Presidency wrote McRae again with an explanation:

On receiving notification that a large number of copies of the Liahona were being printed & circulated containing what is known as the King Follett Sermon, as it has since been corrected and interpolated, with notes added, we sent the following telegraph:

…When the sermon was first published it did not receive the revision or sanction of the Prophet Joseph, who preached it, and it was reported from the impressions obtained by four different persons who heard it, neither of whom was a shorthand writer.

There are some points in the sermon which appear to be in direct conflict with revelations accepted by the Church as divine. Some portions of the original report have been expunged from the version which appears in Liahona; there are some interpolations also which have been made without authorization. Then there are footnotes added introducing ideas not warranted by the text, which state plainly that the original report is evidently incorrect in some particulars. Such a doubtful production we think is not proper to publish as authentic. For these reasons we sent you the dispatch referred to. (6)

Later that month Apostle George Albert Smith wrote to the Central States Mission President:

I have thought that the report of that sermon might not be authentic and I have feared that it contained some things that might be contrary to the truth.. . . Some of the brethren felt as I did and thought that greater publicity should not be given to that particular sermon. (7) [EDITORIAL NOTE: Commenter BHodges transcribed and taken pictures of the entire letter, which he shared with us in comment #29]

It is uncertain with which revelations the First Presidency felt the KFD was in tension. However, there is no question that they sought to prevent the sermon’s circulation. When volume six of the History of the Church was released later that year, it was mysteriously missing the pages (302-317) which included the KFD. T. Edgar Lyon addressing the 1973 Mormon History Association gave a wonderful account of Roberts’s response:

One day–as nearly as I can figure out, it must have been the summer of 1913 when I was somewhere around ten years of age–I was sitting at a table interleafing office forms when a rather stocky man with a dark mustache came in. My father turned and said, “What can I do for you, B. H.?” And the reply was, “Dave, I want you to print a pamphlet for me.” He handed him a manuscript. It was the manuscript of the King Follett discourse. He said, “I completed reading the page proofs of volume six of The History of the Church, Period I. The book went to press. Shortly before it was put on sale, I received a call to tour the mission, and I was gone for three months or so. When I returned I found on my desk a leather bound copy with my name stamped in gold on the sixth volume. I flipped it open and put it up on the shelf. A Sunday or two later I was speaking at stake conference, and I referred to the King Follett discourse. Somebody came up and asked me if that were in print. I said, ‘Of course it is.’ ‘Well where?’ ‘It’s in the sixth volume of the documentary history.’”

Roberts went on to say that during afternoon session of conference–and we used to have two sessions in those days–the man handed President Roberts the book and said, “I have looked through it and I can’t find it.” Roberts replied, “I know it’s in there because I wrote it.” He turned to the place where it should have been, but the sermon wasn’t there. Sixteen pages had been left out of the book.

Well, Brother Roberts said when he got back in Salt Lake City he went to the bookstores and looked at the copies. The King Follett discourse was not in them! When he asked what happened to it, he learned that some of the brethren were not persuaded that the King Follett discourse was authentic. Now I don’t know what the brethren meant in those days, but Brother Roberts did, and he said that he felt very unhappy about it! “David, I want you to print 10,000 copies of this sermon, and please hurry it through the press. I want to take them to the stake and mission conferences and give one to every member of the stake presidencies and high councils and bishoprics, and presidents of the missions and the branches. I’ll give this wider circulation than that book will ever get. (8)

This pamphlet staid in publication and for sale at Deseret Book until the 1960’s. Apparently, Roberts’s persistence won the day. When the now President George Albert Smith asked Robert’s to publish the Comprehensive History of the Church in 1930 it included the material that had been struck from the Americana article. (9) Moreover, when the History of the Church was republished in 1950 the missing pages were included (10 – PDF Transcript). A comparison of the History of the Church version against the Liahona version indicates only subtle changes and many of the notes are retained (comparison of sermon text – comparison of footnote text).

Perhaps the greatest contributor to the shift in institutional perspective regarding the KFD is Roberts’s erstwhile antagonist: Joseph Fielding Smith. Unlike his father, Joseph Fielding felt that the KFD was worth publishing and included an edited version in his very popular (and fairly historiographically flawed) Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (TPJS), first published in 1938.

For fun I have compared the TPJS with the History of the Church (PDF).

[EDITORIAL NOTE: Because of a server glitch, some of the comments on this post were truncated and I was unable to restore them. My apologies to readers.]
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1. E.g., George A. Smith and Wilford Woodruff, Deseret News (January 20, 1858), pg. 363 as quoted in No Author, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2007), 562-563 declares:
   

   The History of Joseph Smith is now before the world, and we are satisfied that a history more correct in its details than this, was never published. To have it strictly correct, the greatest possible pains have been taken by the historians and clerks engaged in the work. They were eye and ear witnesses of nearly all the transactions recorded in this history, most of which were reported as they transpired, and, where they were not personally present, they have had access to those who were. Moreover, since the death of the Prophet Joseph, the History has been carefully revised under the strict inspection of President Brigham Young, and approved of by him.

   We, therefore, hereby bear our testimony to all the world, unto whom these words shall come, that the History of Joseph Smith is true, and is one of the most authentic histories ever written.

2. For a list see, Donald Cannon, “The King Follett Discourse: Joseph Smith’s Greatest Sermon in Historical Perspective,” BYU Studies 18, no. 2 (1977-1978), 190.
3. It is uncertain why Robert’s used this term, however as Justin pointed out, the Times and Seasons printing of the Book of Abraham (3 [March 15, 1842], 720, vs. 21 [Abraham 3:22]) includes a usage of the word that appears to be a typographical mistake. The word does appear in the philosophical writings contemporaneous to Joseph Smith as a synonym for “intelligence.”
4. John P. Hatch, ed., Danish Apostle: The Diaries of Anthon H. Lund, 1890-1921 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in association with the Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2006), 464-465. The First Presidency also held the publication of John Widtsoe’s Rational Theology in order to strike language about tripartite cosmology and the evolution of God, as being speculation. Ibid., 558-9, December 7 and 11, 1914.
5. Joseph F. Smith, Letter [possibly the telegraph referred to in note 6] to Joseph A. McRae, December 28, 1911, in typescript of the First Presidency Letterpress, Scott Kenney Research Collection, Marriott Library Special Collections, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. Kenney frequently abbreviated words in his typescript to facilitate transcription. I have expanded the abbreviations and normalized capitalization.
6. Office of the First Presidency, Letter to Joseph A. McRae, January 6, 1912, in typescript of the First Presidency Letterpress, Scott Kenney Research Collection. Abbreviations and capitalization normalized.
7. George Albert Smith to Samuel O. Bennion, January 30, 1912, George Albert Smith Family Papers, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah as quoted in Donald Cannon, “The King Follett Discourse: Joseph Smith’s Greatest Sermon in Historical Perspective.”
8. T. Edgar Lyon, “Church Historians I Have Known,” Dialogue 11 (Winter 1978): 14-15.
9. B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Century I, in Six Volumes, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), 2:392.
10. Joseph Smith, et al., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1950), 6:302-317.

Joseph Smith delivered the “King Follett Discourse” (KFD) on April 7, 1844. It was his last General Conference. Joseph had lost several close associates to apostasy and Navuoo was tense. Joseph defied his critics, and with the KFD, Joseph showed his hand, pledging as proof that he was not “a fallen prophet,” details of his ultimate theology. The critics had a field-day with the content and Joseph made his rebuttal on June 16, in what is commonly called the “Sermon in the Grove.” The KFD is perhaps the most famous of all Joseph’s sermons, but the text of the most common printings has followed and interesting and, at times, strained route. This post is the first of a two part series reviewing the history of this text.

Unlike the leaders of the Church in Utah, clerks, trained in short hand, were never available to record the sermons of Joseph Smith. Fortunately, several individuals habitually recorded notes and or longhand transcriptions of Joseph’s teachings. At the April 1844 conference, there were several:

Thomas Bullock
Bullock was the official scribe for the general conference. His record of Joseph Smith’s sermon, with the rest of the conference minutes are available in the “Church Historian’s Office General Church Minutes, 1839-1877,” LDS Archives. High quality digital images of the holograph record are available in Selected Collections from the Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2 vols., DVD (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, [Dec. 2002], 1:18.

William Clayton
William Clayton was Joseph’s personal scribe. His diary accounts of Joseph Smith’s teachings are an invaluable resource and have even been used for the text of sections in the Doctrine and Covenants. Clayton’s journal is located in the LDS Archives and the Joseph Smith years are restricted from public access. In the late 1970′s Andrew Ehat was granted access to the restricted Clayton diaries and made transcript extracts of approximately 50% of this journal for use in his publishing and scholarly pursuits. (1) A copy of this transcript was stolen from a colleague’s office and given to the Tanners who published it. Lawsuits ensued. Ehat won, but the decision was overturned on appeal. (2) George Smith later edited these transcripts and included them in the widely cited, An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995). (3)

Willard Richards
Richards was Joseph’s secretary and as such wrote Joseph Smith’s journal. The holograph is located in the LDS Archives, which have been digitally reproduced in Selected Collections, 1:20. Scott Faulring edited the Joseph Smith journals (other than the entries in the “Book of the Law of the Lord”) and published them as An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, Inc., 1987). Faulring’s edition was hugely important, however it was also frequently heavily and silently edited. Subsequently, Dean Jessee started a serial publication of the Papers of Joseph Smith. (4) The first volume included historical and autobiographical writings and the second comprised the Joseph Smith diaries to 1842. The 1843-44 diaries were to be included in volume three; however, for a number of reasons, not excluding internal politics within LDS Church administration, the volume was never published. The Joseph Smith Papers project took over, with expansive (but not hasty) glory, and we expect to see a volume covering this later period to appear approximately summer 2010.

Wilford Woodruff
Wilford Woodruff, an early apostle and prodigious journal keeper, frequently recorded Joseph Smith’s sermons. Woodruff’s journals, approximately 7,000 holograph pages, cover the years of 1833-1898. Woodruff stipulated that his journals stay in the possession of his family and that his history should eventually be published. In 1981, the Woodruff Family Association contracted with Signature Books to publish what is one of the most foundational extant Mormon historical sources. (5)

George Laub
George Laub was a British émigré who arrived in Nauvoo during the Spring of 1843. Eugene England edited his holograph journal (LDS Archives) for BYU Studies. (6) Laub included in his journal some Joseph Smith sermon transcripts. However, as Ehat and Cook note, there are some inconsistencies in his record:

Unquestionably, the date George Laub assigned to this transcript is incorrect. He did not arrive in Nauvoo until 9 May 1843, a month after the date given for the sermon (6 April 1843). Because he did not begin his journal until 1 January 1845, these notes of the Prophet’s “King Follett” sermon…were not transcribed into his journal until at least eight months after the [sermon was] delivered. This probably accounts for his error in dating this and the other sermons.

Of course, this leads to a question regarding the strict contemporaneousness of these notes. There are a number of evidences in this report, however, which suggest that it is based on contemporary notes. (For example, see the incidental note that Joseph Smith “referred to 6 chapter of Hebrews.”) Nevertheless, because the notes really are only a summary of the major points of the “King Follett” sermon, and because George Laub indicates that this account was from “memory,” the account included here is given without further annotation. (7)

Moreover, the source used by Ehat and Cook as well as England, was Reminiscences and Journal, 1845-1846, MS 1983, LDS Church Archives. This was a later edited and revised copy of the original journal, MS 9628, which was not available when they did their studies (though it is now available at the LDS Church History Library)
.
Source Redux
Typescripts of these five contemporaneous accounts are available to scholars. Ehat and Cook’s Words of Joseph Smith (see note 1) was the first and standard scholarly production of texts. Their 1980 and 1991 editions however, omitted the George Laub account. This was rectified in the 1996 digital edition. Ehat has worked to further revise and expand the volume and is expected to produce a third edition in 2008. Additionally, W. V. Smith at the online Book of Abraham Project has compiled the Parallel Joseph in which the various sources are arranged in columns according to their correspondence. The Parallel Joseph version of the KFD is available here. For some additional details about the holograph records, see the introduction to Stan Larsen’s 1978 amalgamated text. (8)

Published Accounts

Times and Seasons
In the months following the KFD, editors combined the Bullock and Clayton accounts and published them as No Author, “Conference Minutes,” Times and Seasons 5 (August 15, 1844): 612-617 (PDF Typescript). This version of the KFD was published in the Fall of 1844 in the Millennial Star. The transcript is 4,760 words and approximates about 30% of that actual sermon. (9)

“History of Joseph Smith”
Joseph Smith was killed before he and his scribes finished his history. In the subsequent decades, the folks in the Church Historians Office pulled sources from all over the place to compile the “Manuscript History of the Church.” This process is best described in Howard Searle’s dissertation (see note 9). Specifically, Searle has a nice section on the amalgamation of sources that uses the KFD as an example. (10) Basically, the Church historians took the T&S account of the KFD and beefed it up using the Woodruff and Richards accounts of the sermon. A marginal note in the “Manuscript History,” text of the discourse states, “Compiled from the four reports by Jonathan Grimshaw; carefully revised and compared by George A. Smith and Thomas Bullock, read in Council Sunday 18th Nov. 1855, and carefully revised by President Brigham Young.” (11) This was standard practice for the reconstruction of Joseph’s sermons. This textual expansion resulted in increasing the word count of the T&S version by approximately 50%. The “Manuscript History” was serialized in the Deseret News and the KFD was published as “History of Joseph Smith: April 1844,” Deseret News 7 (July 8, 1857): 137-138 (PDF typescript).

Using the wonders of technology, I have produced a textual comparison of the T&S version and the “History of Joseph Smith” version. In this comparison it is quite easy to see how the Church Historians retained the general structure of the T&S version, supplementing the form with additional materials.

Part II of this study will look at the most controversial period of the KFD history, and have lots of fun geekery.

_________________

1. Most famously, Ehat worked with Lyndon Cook to produce the seminal Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph (Provo, UH: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1980). This volume was reprinted by Grandin Book Company (Orem Ut, 1991) and the text was revised for a second edition, first computer edition in 1996. This digital version is available through various Mormon digital collections, including, Gospelink and LDS Library. However, the bulk of Ehat’s notes found their use in his very important unpublished masters thesis: “Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances and the 1844 Mormon Succession Question” (MA thesis, Brigham Young University, 1982).
2. 780 F.2d 876, Tenth Circuit – Andrew F. Ehat, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jerald Tanner and Sandra Tanner, Modern Microfilm Company, Defendants-Appellants., US.FEDERAL.ca10.
3. For more information on the publication history of Ehat’s transcript as well as a critical review of their content see, James B. Allen, “An intimate chronicle: the journals of William Clayton [Book review],” BYU Studies 35, no. 2 (1995), 165-175.
4. Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Papers of Joseph Smith, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1989-1992).
5. Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 1833-1898, typescript, edited by Scott G. Kenney, 9 vols. (Midvale, Utah: Signature Books, 1983-85).
6. Eugene England, “George Laub’s Nauvoo Journal,” BYU Studies 18, no. 2 (1978), 157-58.
7. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph, 2nd ed. rev., 1st computer ed., (1996), June 7 (2), 1844, note 124.
8. Stan Larson, “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text,” BYU Studies 18, no. 2 (1977-78), 193-208.
9. Howard Clair Searle, “Early Mormon Historiography: Writing the History of the Mormons, 1830-1858″ (Ph.D. Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1979), 277.
10. Ibid., 275-283.
11. Ibid., 282.

As he moves on to other endeavors, I wish him well, and thank him.

Our last paper on the development of the Mormon healing liturgy to 1847 set the foundation for much of the rest of our work. It includes the various rituals that Mormons have used for healing throughout its existence and, most importantly for our next manuscript, contextualizes and narrates the beginning of female ritual healing in Mormonism. Our next paper will continue that history to the end of the practice in the mid-twentieth century. We have loads of previously unpublished source materials and are excited to get cracking.

The way Kris and I typically do things is to gather our source material in a “source file.” These files include the text of the reference organized chronologically. Each reference is numbered and includes full bibliographic citation. We read over these source files separately and then together (which is where a lot of great ideas come to fruition) and then we sketch an outline and divvy up writing duties.

I just finished updating our source file on female ritual healing (it is a monster). Instead of printing it out and having it spirally bound, I thought I would just upload it to a print-on-demand service and have it hard bound (it didn’t cost too much more than having it done at Kinko’s). The only 8.5×11 hardback that the service I used offers is what is called “casewrap binding.” This is frequently the binding of textbooks and is full color. So, quick in dirty, I wallowed in my Mormon history geekery. I could have done a better job if I had spent more time on it, but I wanted to get that thing ordered.

We still have at least one more trip to the archives before we finish this manuscript. And we have a long list of materials that we will be begging for at the Church History Department.

Those that thought the history of Mormon healing was already written are in for some surprises.

Jedediah S. Rogers, ed., In the President’s Office: The Diaries of L. John Nuttall 1879-1892 (Salt Lake City, Signature Books, 2007), 511 pages, clothbound.

For some time now, Signature Books has published important (to Mormon History) diaries. These transcripts are deftly annotated and hand bound in limited runs. The last two installments in their series were the diaries of Anthon Lund and John Nuttall.

Anthon Lund was a monogamist apostle and then member of the First Presidency from 1901 to 1921. He was born in Denmark, but journalized in English. He was the Manti and Salt Lake Temple Presidents and served as the Church Historian. He was involved in one of the most critical periods of Mormon development and as such his Diaries are a treasure for the researcher. These documents were donated to the Church by the Lund family with the express instruction that they be available to the public. Thomas Alexander was one of the chief historians who wielded his journal in the scholastics of history.

John Nuttall was involved in church governance in southern Utah but because of his bureaucratic skills was brought into be the secretary to the President of the Church (Young, Taylor and Woodruff). Nutall was involved with the Saint George Temple and was privy to a wonderful perspective within the presiding quorums. Nuttal struggled with his health, and being a polygamist, spent time hiding from the Feds. The source materials, as well as a complete typescript are available at the BYU Archives.

Both of these gentlemen left massive diaries. The editors consequently had to scour over the original documents and basically decide what of the text would be most important to include in a single volume edition. Such projects are inherently prone to criticism and I found in my research the need to consult the primary documents themselves, as entries that I knew to be extant and not included were impactful on my theses. This makes me nervous that there are other things that due to my proximity to the archives I am missing. This is without question frustrating, and made more so as the volumes do not indicate when they skip entries or paragraphs. However, outside of a complete work, a la the Woodruff Journals for which Signature will forever be acknowledged, such are the trappings of publication (my dream is that the nascent Church Historian’s Press will bury me with finely edited and complete works of primary sources).

The editors have both successfully produced exemplary volumes. The annotations are helpful and reference cogent accounts and details that enhance the readers experience. One cannot understate the value of these documents. Their expanded availability is without question a boon to Mormon History. Nuttall’s diaries are, however, short shrifted as the Signature volume only includes entries during his life in the President’s office. The remainder of his life was full and held wonderful insights into the nineteenth and early twentieth century church.

The books themselves are beautiful. The typesetting renders the text a joy to read, and when compared to recent offerings from Kofford are contrasted even more illustrious. I understand the market to which Signature renders these products; however, I do wonder if the high end market is truly the only fit for such products.

The publisher summarizes as follows:

After the 1872 publication of Exposé of Polygamy, Fanny Stenhouse became a celebrity in the cultural wars between Mormons and much of America. An English convert to Mormonism, she had grown disillusioned with the Mormon Church and with polygamy, which her husband practiced before associating with a circle of dissident Utah intellectuals and merchants. Stenhouse’s critique of plural marriage, Brigham Young, and Mormonism was also a sympathetic look at Utah’s people and honest recounting of her life. Before long, she created a new edition, titled Tell It All, which ensured her notoriety in Utah and popularity elsewhere but turned her thoughtful memoir into a more polemical, true exposé. Since 1874, it has stayed in print, in multiple, varying editions. The original book, meanwhile, is less known, though more readable. Tracing the literary history of Stenhouse’s important piece of Americana, Linda DeSimone rescues an important autobiographical and historical record from the baggage notoriety brought to it.

Perhaps unkown to the editors, the 1872 edition was digitized in 2006 (both the first printing and the second) by Google Books (see my previous write-up on the impact of Google Books in Mormon Studies). These are not only searchable through Google, but as they are in the public domain, one can download a PDF of the entire book for personal use.

As I previously stated, this series has been an unqualified success. My favored volumes include the diaries of Helen Mar Whiney, Patty Bartlett Session, Louisa Barnes Pratt and others. The Pratt volume is available in previous form: it was included in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers’ publications which are digitally available from ancestry.com. But Ellsworth’s edition is faithful to the holograph, which highlights the frequently abusive editorial procedure of the DUP, and includes valuable annotation (though not up to the standard of Compton’s edition). While I am happy to see any publications highlighting women’s history in Mormon Studies, I find USU Press’s choice for this year’s series edition rather disappointing. I don’t really see what added value is had by its publication.

My vote for future volumes: the Mary Ann Freeze and the Ruth May Fox diaries.

This sounded to me like a sea-change in church policy towards the internet, or at least a drastic clarification. For some time, there has seemed to me to be a consolidation and control of web presence, with the standardization of ward pages, and the status of unofficial pages and blogs devoted to the church seemed to be a bit ambiguous. I think this makes it clear that while there are some things that should be avoided (He mentioned that debates about doctrine–I would separate this from discussions that seek to understand doctrine and its application, though that’s me–and airing our doubts don’t do much to build the kingdom, and cautioned against being defensive or belligerent.), the brethren recognize the “real” status of virtual space.

I know that I have often had the opportunity to answer questions on this blog, and I hope to be a bit more active in contributing to whatever good is done in the blogosphere for the kingdom.

To start that off, I want to know. Does anyone have stories to tell about how the kingdom has been served in cyberspace? Have your blogs, websites, social networking spaces, second lives, etc. been effective tools for missionary work or simply explaining our beliefs where they had been otherwise misunderstood?

An article on Ballard’s talk and a transcript can be found here: It was recorded, and I assume it will soon be available in video.