William G. Hartley was a research historian for BYU’s Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Brigham Young University and completed doctoral course work at Washington State University. Hartley was a leading authority on Church history, having worked at the Church History Department and on the Joseph Smith Papers Project. His books have focused on family history research and histories of specific families and nineteen-century Latter-day Saint history. He and his wife, Linda, had six children.