Cheryl Bruno is making both mainstream Mormon historian & polygamy skeptics upset. On the one hand, she says polygamy skeptics are making good points about original documents questioning the traditional narrative about Joseph Smith’s polygamy. On the other hand, she upsets skeptics because she believes Joseph practiced polygamy. Should we be more careful about claims Joseph practiced polygamy? Check out our conversation…
Don’t miss our other conversations with Chery! https://gospeltangents.com/people/cheryl-bruno/
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Giving Polygamy Deniers Credibility?
GT 00:35 I know a lot of people, especially in the RLDS Church, and some in the maybe the polygamy skeptics community, they look at Joseph and Emma, especially their public denials about Joseph’s involvement in polygamy. So, I’d like to dive into those, because you have a really unique perspective on that. Where do you want to start?
Cheryl 1:10 Let me just say that we do sometimes call the RLDS, which is now Community of Christ. But back in the time we’re talking about they were RLDS. So that’s why we switch back and forth on saying sometimes RLDS, and when we’re speaking of it today, it is Community of Christ.
GT 1:27 Right.
Cheryl 1:28 But I just want to make that clear. When we first started writing this book over two years ago, there was not this big controversy over whether Joseph Smith practiced polygamy or not. That has grown out of the past two years. So, the book doesn’t directly speak to that controversy, but many of the things, especially Mark Tensmeyer’s chapter, have to do with the controversy. And so you can read this book if you’re interested in that controversy, and it will give you some information on it. But it wasn’t written specifically for that.
GT 2:06 Right.
Cheryl 2:07 Over the past two years, I have become acquainted with some of the people that do that try to do more scholarly work, going back to the original documents and saying that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy. But he, in fact, spoke against it, and that Brigham Young and others of the Twelve and polygamy insiders were working behind Joseph Smith’s back to develop this principle of polygamy. Then after Joseph Smith died, is when it actually came to the forefront. I personally do not believe that scenario. I believe there’s enough evidence to show that Joseph did practice polygamy, but I feel that we should take these polygamy skeptics very seriously, because they are bringing up great points. They’re looking at some of the old research that we’ve done and calling our attention to holes that we have in that and sometimes missteps that we’ve made.
GT 3:09 You even had an arm wrestle with Chris Blythe?
Cheryl 3:12 I did. Apparently, we settle our differences by arm wrestling now.
GT 3:20 Have you been working out? Is that why you beat Chris?
Cheryl 3:23 Yeah. But I think, well, some of the names, I’m not going to call out names or anything here in this interview, but some people who are Mormon historians in the scholarly community, just want to ignore the polygamy skeptics and not give them a platform.
GT 3:45 Yeah, they base a lot of the dismissals on old RLDS arguments and say that they haven’t changed. But some of them have.
Cheryl 3:55 Right, right exactly, and originally, when they first started, there were many different factions in this polygamy skeptics group, where you would have some factions that would bring in other concepts, like, who killed Joseph Smith? Or the Salt Lake Temple was built by aliens, or the flat earth people. You had everyone across the board. That’s one reason why people thought that polygamy skeptics were just crackpots, because in some cases, they were associated with these other [groups.] I myself, I’ve written on Freemasonry, and I consider myself an expert on Freemasonry. Some of these people were saying, well, Joseph Smith was never a Freemason. They were connecting that with their argument that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy. I actually did a podcast showing the documentation that Joseph Smith was a Freemason and telling them that when they connect that argument with the other, they’re just hurting themselves. Because we do have much documentation showing that Joseph Smith was a Freemason. I think their argument that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy maybe has a little bit more kick to it. If they can just focus on that, then that’s when historians should take note and to try to answer some of these questions. Because many of the questions are coming from primary documents, and we need to be able to explain those if we want to keep our narrative that Joseph practiced polygamy. We need to make an explanation of why we have some of the documents that we have.
Why Cheryl is Convinced of Joseph’s Polygamy
GT 5:46 Okay. Where do you fit in the whole Joseph Smith practiced polygamy [question?] I mean, you think there’s lots of evidence?
Cheryl 5:57 No, I think there’s not lots of evidence. I always believed in the past that there was lots of evidence, and now I’ve come to feel that there’s not lots of evidence. There is enough evidence to convince me that Joseph Smith definitely practiced polygamy, that he originated it, and he practiced it in the Mormon Church. It wasn’t just Brigham that was originating it, or John C. Bennett, but I feel it comes down to Joseph Smith. So there’s enough evidence to convince me. But I feel that our narrative around it has some holes and has some problems. And so the narrative we’ve always used to talk about Joseph Smith’s polygamy may have some problems. Some of the evidence that we have used we can go back and trace it. Because the polygamy skeptics are going back and tracing the original documents and finding that they’re not what we have always said they were. This is very interesting to me, and that’s why I like to give them credence. Because they’re finding so much, and I’d like to go back and look at the original documents. Because we can do this in a way that we’ve never been able to do before.
GT 7:04 Yeah, and thanks to the Joseph Smith Papers.
Cheryl 7:08 The Joseph Smith Papers. We can go to the Church History Library and easily look at scans of these documents. If we have troubles with the scans, we can actually go in. A person can show us the documents. There are many ways that we can address the documents that we have never been able to do before. I’d like to now go back and do those things and revise our narrative in in many ways. But I think that that’s threatening to some people, because they don’t want to entertain the notion that perhaps he never did practice polygamy. Then on the other side, there’s people that are very ready to say, Joseph never practiced polygamy. It’s a troubling doctrine. It would be easy to say, No. That wasn’t Joseph Smith that did that. That wasn’t our Prophet.
GT 7:58 It’s just anti Mormon propaganda.
Cheryl 8:00 God would never have sanctioned something like that.
GT 8:04 Which is not a historical that’s a religious argument.
Cheryl 8:06 That’s a religious argument. But it’s very easy to accept, because if you don’t like polygamy, you don’t want to see Joseph Smith practicing it. But I think that if we go back to the documents, if we use a scholarly approach, then we can have a better way of explaining and understanding Joseph Smith’s polygamy.
GT 8:31 Okay, two questions there. There was a story that I don’t remember very well. There was a situation where somebody, and I don’t know if it was William Clayton or somebody else. Somebody came to Emma with evidence of Joseph’s involvement with polygamy. Supposedly, Emma’s response was, Well, then he was worthy of the death he died.[1] Are you familiar with that story?
Cheryl 9:03 I’m sorry, I’m not. I’ve heard the story before, but I’ve never seen the documentation for that, so I probably can’t really comment on it.
GT 9:12 Yeah, because I was wondering.
Cheryl 9:13 Here’s the thing. We have all these stories like that. Right? And so what these polygamy skeptics are saying is, well, let’s go back and look. Where is the documentation for that? Is it just a story that originated in 1890? Does it go back? Where are we getting this from? So that’s the first thing I would do if I was going to look into that, is, let’s find where that originated. Sometimes you have to look back through several books. You might find it in one history, and they give you a footnote. So, you go back. You look at the other footnote, and then you look. Then maybe you come to the end of the chain, and it’s not an original document. If not, we’ve got to throw it out.
GT 9:55 Or it’s a late document.
Cheryl 9:57 Right, yeah. So, we’ve got to figure these things out. A lot of people think, a lot of historians will say, Oh, we’ve already done all that, but no, we have not. We have not done that. There are many cases where some of the polygamy skeptics have shown that we have repeated things other historians have said, and we haven’t actually gone back to the original document, and it doesn’t say it in the original document.
Reliability of Clayton Journals
GT 10:21 Well, another issue that I’d like to talk about is the William Clayton journals. There are some people who question their validity and reliability and whether they can be trusted. Of course, the Clayton journals are the best contemporary [evidence.] They’re the most voluminous, I guess, contemporary evidence of polygamy. I remember I was doing. In fact, I asked Clair Barrus about this, and I was like, Okay, I need an image of the Clayton journals. And what popped up, to my surprise, and I will admit, a little bit delight was the tracing of the Kinderhook Plates. I was like, oh, that’s in there too. I know a lot of people have said, with regards to the Kinderhook Plates, that’s like an exact drawing. It’s exact size. And definitely, it seems very reliable with regards to the story of the Kinderhook Plates. And so I know we’re not here to talk about the Kinderhook Plates. But it would add a stamp of validation that, yeah, these journals can be relied on. That’s contemporary. And so where do you sit on this idea of the reliability of the Clayton journals?
Cheryl 11:51 That’s a very good question, and it is a key part of this argument. Because it is one of the prime although they’re not voluminous. We don’t have a lot that William Clayton said about polygamy, but he is one of the few contemporary sources that did talk about polygamy. So the question is, how reliable [are they?] Was his journal actually contemporary? Because that’s what they’re saying. They’re saying, “No, this is came from notes that later on he put into a journal.” Then he could have, in the meantime, changed the notes or added to the notes well.
GT 12:27 In addition to that issue, which I think is a valid point. I’m going to make up the dates here, but July 1 is in Book 1. In July 7 is in Book 2.
Cheryl 12:36 I was just about to get to that,
GT 12:37 Okay, go ahead.
Cheryl 12:38 Right. His journals are not always in chronological order. So to me, that makes it more [authentic.] I mean, if he was faking it, he would definitely have put them in chronological order. Right? So, and I always tell people about my own journals. Because recently, I was writing in a journal and I had lost it. There was something I needed to put down, so I just wrote it in a journal from, like, five years ago or something. Yeah, I put the date that it was. And so, you can see that it’s date, but it looks kind of fishy, like, why did she suddenly just put this entry in a five-year-old journal? I know that happens when you’re writing journals. Right? And also, it was done a lot where they would take notes and then later put them into a nice copy. Right? That wasn’t suspicious. People say, Oh, it’s so suspicious that you went back. But that wasn’t suspicious. That’s just what was done many times.
GT 13:43 Even a modern thing; I’ve been to meetings, and I’ve written notes extremely hurriedly. The writing’s terrible. Then you go back later, and you like, “Oh, I remember what was said. This reminds me.” And so you write a better narrative. And so that’s not necessarily a fishy thing. I mean, some people look at it that way.
Cheryl 14:01 They do look at it as fishy. And so what we want to do is we want to try to look at it. I think this is why the Clayton journals are taking so long to come out, because they want to take a close look and see how close can we date it, to see when he actually made this fair copy? What can we tell about these things? And so, I think they want to be very responsible with coming out with the journals. It is taking a long time, and it’s frustrating. But I think they want to put as much into it notes that will help us understand how reliable they are. I feel that they are, especially for the time, I think they’re reliable. The other thing is that there’s no—I’ve talked to several people that have actually read the journals working on the project. Well, not several: two. But they both say that there’s not, there’s not a bunch of [writing] around the topic of polygamy. We’re not going to find anything new that he said that we don’t already have. Right? So the researchers that have already seen the journals, and that have taken notes and told us what’s in them. They’ve been pretty thorough on the topic of polygamy. So, there are other things that we don’t know about that will probably be interesting. But there’s not going to be new things about polygamy. The main thing is going to be, how reliable are they? How contemporary are they? That’s what we want to look at.
GT 15:29 Okay. Is that something that you can make a judgment on their reliability?
Cheryl 15:36 Yeah, I would say that they’re very reliable. I have not seen them, so I’m probably not the best person. But I have talked to people that have seen them, and I’ve been quite interested in them. I’ve studied how journals were done in the same time period, what other journals look like, what other notes like Masonic minutes notes and that kind of thing, journal history of the church. I see that this is something that’s not only done in the Mormon Church, it’s done in writing history of the United States, in writing a history of some of the figures that were alive at the time. So, it’s not unusual. It’s not something we should be suspicious of.
GT 16:19 Okay.
William Marks Accounts of Polygamy
GT 16:21 Are there other pieces of especially contemporary evidence that you think is good evidence for Joseph’s practice of polygamy?
Cheryl 16:34 Well, I wrote a biography of William Marks and he has a couple different places where he talks about Nauvoo polygamy. I think that William Marks is one of the main people that gives primary evidence that Joseph practiced polygamy, and he doesn’t…
GT 16:53 Are they going to come after you now with your Marks book?
Cheryl 16:57 Well, we don’t have contemporary evidence from him, but we have later reminiscences. I’ve talked to a lot of polygamy skeptics that say that William Marks’s statements are one of the things that give them pause, that make them think maybe he had good reason to believe that Joseph practiced polygamy. The one I like the most is and John Dinger has talked about it before too, that William Marks was the first counselor to Joseph Smith, III and he met with their Council of the 12 Apostles in a meeting where the Council of 12 asked him, did Joseph practice polygamy? (point blank.] William Marks talked about the time when Hyrum Smith was wondering about polygamy, and said he was going to go to Joseph, and he came back with the revelation and presented it to the High Council. So, that’s hard to get around. Because at the time, William Marks actually had motivation to deny polygamy because here he was in the Reorganized Church, and he was first counselor to Joseph Smith, III who was denying polygamy. So he did not have motivation to say132 was presented before the High Council, and yet he did. So that’s hard to get around. There’s several different evidences like that that I take very seriously. I believe it’s not reasonable to say that Joseph didn’t practice it.
Cowdery Excommunication: Evidence for Joseph’s Polygamy
GT 18:28 One of the things that I find is pretty good evidence, contemporary evidence for Joseph Smith’s polygamy is the Oliver Cowdery trial in Missouri, where Oliver gets excommunicated and he accuses Joseph of a dirty, nasty, filthy, scrape/affair. How reliable [is that?] Because I know some people have tried to take issue with that as well. How reliable would you call that evidence?
Cheryl 18:59 Oh, it really is convincing to me. I know lots of people have said, well, he could have been—I don’t really think anyone has a great argument of why he was so incensed and so upset about it, other than that it was Joseph having a relationship with someone that wasn’t his wife. If I don’t see really any way around it. Although I must say that I have talked to David Goulding recently. We had a very long conversation, several hours on the phone, and he is doing some work on that story, the Fanny Alger story, Fanny Custer, which really he has a point. We should call her Fanny Custer, because that’s what she went by for most of her life.
GT 19:48 We usually pick their maiden name.
Cheryl 19:49 People don’t call me Cheryl Lund. Does anyone know that I’m Cheryl Lund?
GT 19:53 Now we do.
Cheryl 19:57 People call me Cheryl Bruno. I expect that after I die, that I will still be Cheryl Bruno.
GT 20:02 Well, unless you get involved in polygamy, and then we’ll get confused.
Cheryl 20:05 Right. I mean, he makes a good point, but anyway, he talks about Fanny a lot. He has reason to believe that one, I don’t think he even believes that Fanny lived in the Smith home, which now is new [position.] I don’t think anyone’s ever…
GT 20:28 Didn’t Eliza snow say that she was in the home?
Cheryl 20:30 Right. So, if he comes out with new evidence of these things, I think this will be very interesting. It may make it go in a different direction than it ever has, because he is very seriously researching this.
GT 20:44 Secret covenants 2?
Cheryl 20:46 Right! I don’t know that he’s ever published on it, but I’m looking forward to seeing what he has to say. He is very great researcher and has access to documents. What he has to say is going to have to be taken very seriously.
GT 21:02 Because it seems like I know Don Bradley worked with Brian Hales, and he was supposed to find everything he could find. Is there stuff that Don didn’t find?
Cheryl 21:11 Don has found virtually everything there is to be found. But not everything has been carefully considered, I would say.
GT 21:21 Okay.
Cheryl 21:22 We have some documents that we’re aware of, but no one’s really dug into them and done a lot of analysis. So that’s one thing that Don is good at, but he can’t do everything. There’s so much. So now David is working on this. I’m very excited to see what he has to say. But so far, before he comes out with his stuff, right now, I believe that there was a relationship and Oliver Cowdery is very good evidence.
Religious vs Historical Arguments
GT 21:53 Okay, very good. Is there anything else along those lines that you can think of, especially in Joseph’s lifetime?
Cheryl 22:00 Well, there are lots of little things, so we have a lot to do. That’s why I appeal to Mormon historians to get involved in this and to respond. It’s very difficult sometimes, because like we said, we mentioned that many arguments are religious arguments. Most of them are being presented by podcast. Right? If you don’t have time to sit and listen to a whole two-and-a-half-hour podcast that is mostly religious argument but maybe has one historical detail that we need to look at. So, that’s hard, and so some of the work to be done by the polygamy deniers, or, I’m sorry, polygamy skeptics. We need them to sit down and give us lists of what the what the historical points are.
GT 22:48 Because I will say, I do find it frustrating when, instead of religious, I would call them polemical arguments, when they’re just railing on this person’s doing terrible. Todd Compton is terrible, and Brian Hales is terrible. I don’t want to hear that. You can have your opinion about them. That’s fine. But what’s the actual argument? It’s like two and a half hours in and it’s 10 minutes or something. I don’t have two and a half hours to listen to 10 minutes. That’s frustrating to me, I will say.
Cheryl 23:27 Right. Many of the serious historians that are covering the issue are also practicing Latter-day Saints as I am. And so, it’s hard to listen to when the podcast starts with Brigham Young was a horrible liar, nasty, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to listen to the rest of that podcast because yes, I respect Joseph Smith, and I also respect Brigham Young. I know that there are many reasons why Brigham Young was a very difficult character. I’m not going to lie about that. But I also respect him, and I believe that he loved Joseph Smith. I mean, one of my favorite quotes from Brigham Young is, “I feel like shouting hallelujah all the time when I think that I ever knew the Prophet of the restoration.” To me, I love that. I think Brigham really did love Joseph. He wasn’t going behind his back and trying to do some horrible, nasty thing that Joseph did not approve of. I don’t think that. That’s not my idea of it. So my point is just that when you start your podcast out with that, it’s hard for me to then listen to what the historical arguments are.
GT 24:35 Amen.
Cheryl 24:36 There’s a balance here. I really suggest that we look at their good arguments and that we respond to them. Yet I also appeal to polygamy skeptics to give us something concrete that we can engage…
GT 24:50 Less polemical.
Cheryl 24:51 Something we can engage.
GT 24:53 Yeah, I totally agree with that.
Is it Acceptable to Throw Out Late Evidence?
GT 24:55 I do want to ask you about this, because I talked to Denver Snuffer, and it was funny. I was joking with John [Dinger] about, oh, we can make fun of lawyers. Of course, Denver’s a lawyer as well. To me, this is your perfect defense tactic. But [Snuffer] said, well, if we throw out everything after June 27, 1844, which is going to throw out a lot of evidence, then there’s not very much evidence. I do get that point. But the fact of the matter is, if you’re doing a murder case, all the evidence is going to be collected after the murder. Right? I talked to Mark Tensmeyer, another lawyer. He was talking about wills and things like that. Most of that evidence is going to be collected after. So, I understand the argument that we need to be careful with late sources. But do you think it’s responsible to throw out everything? I’m going to use June 27, 1844, because that’s the day Joseph died. Is it responsible to just throw it all out and say, well, it’s late. I’m not going to use it?
Cheryl 26:08 You don’t have to go to lawyers for that. You can talk to historians. Because in the historical method is when we look at someone who is an eyewitness of something, and we have late evidence when they’re looking back at something, that is primary evidence. Right? That is primary evidence. So, we cannot throw that out, because this person says that they were a wife of Joseph Smith, and they’re still alive, and they’re saying that in 1870 or 90 or whenever they give that testimony. That testimony is important testimony that we cannot throw out. Right? So, yes, I think that we need to be cognizant of the fact that there is, there are very few contemporary accounts. Right? For good reason, because it was a secret.
GT 26:55 It was illegal, too.
Cheryl 26:56 And it was illegal, so we are not going to expect to see a lot of contemporary evidence. We do, like you said, have to be careful, because when you’re looking back 40 years later, it’s difficult. People are saying, well, my mother couldn’t remember many details about my birth 40 years later.
GT 27:17 Or even Emma.
Cheryl 27:18 But she remembers that she had a baby. Right? She remembers she got married to a certain man. Right? Those are things we don’t really remember. We may forget the date of when that happened, whether it was a Friday or Tuesday, or whether it was the 28th or the 23rd. Those things were a little fuzzy on who was maybe even there. I can’t remember very many people who were at my wedding, either. But I do remember the guy I got married to. Right? So, I mean, it’s hard to just throw out. You can’t throw it all out. Let’s take it. Let’s examine it. Let’s see what’s corroborating evidence and that kind of thing. So, use the historical method.
GT 28:00 Okay, very good.
Why Temple Lot Case CAN be Trusted
GT 28:02 So, and then, of course, another big piece of polygamy evidence is the Temple Lot Case. I know a lot of people like to throw that out because it’s late. I think it’s in the 1880s. Does that sound right to you?
Cheryl 28:18 I should know that date on the top of my head, but I don’t.
GT 28:19 Okay. I think that’s about right. But a lot of people throw that out because it’s late. But on the other hand, I mean, these are affidavits for court. You can get arrested or not arrested. I don’t know the word, but I’m not a lawyer. You can be charged with perjury if you’re lying to a court.
Cheryl 28:40 We do see carefully worded denials in that Temple Lot case. But again, these people are people who were there, who were living, who had the lived experience. Most of the cases, they’re not looking back and saying, Well, my grandmother said. That’s not second third hand evidence. That’s something they are remembering.
GT 29:02 This would be primary source material, because they’re eyewitnesses in most cases.
Cheryl 29:07 Yeah. The thing that, to me, is the biggest thing is that when people are backing up each other, and they’re not because you can say, you can take all the affidavits that were created in 1890 and take them as a group and say, well, those were all people that were in a conspiracy to protect Brigham Young or whatever. But then if you can have another group of evidence from people who were in a different [group,] like who practiced polygamy with one of the other successors of Joseph Smith, or someone who was in the Reorganized Church whose motivation was not to protect Brigham Young. There are many affidavits that we have from people who hated Brigham Young and were against him. So, when you have all this cloud of witnesses, then it’s very difficult to throw them all out.
GT 30:02 Okay, well, very good. Is there anything else on that? I have other questions to ask, but they’re not polygamy related.
Cheryl 30:11 Well, go ahead.
GT 30:13 Okay, so is there anything on polygamy before we move on?
Cheryl 30:18 I think that’s good.
GT 30:18 Okay, okay.
{End of Part 3}
[1] The quote comes from Richard Van Wagoner’s book titled, “Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait in Religious Excess.” Emma again denies polygamy. Footnote 30, page 304 states, “In 1846, two years after Joseph’s death, Emma Smith, in a conversation with Joseph W. Coolidge, remarked that ‘Joseph had abandoned plurality of wives before his death.’ Coolidge indicated from personal experience that he knew otherwise. After a heated exchange Emma retorted with exasperation, ‘Then he was worthy of the death he died.’” (Joseph F. Smith diary, 28 Aug 1870.) A summary is found here: https://mormonheretic.org/2016/06/26/does-dc-132-support-polyandry/
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