A Publishing Milestone in the Making

As the magnificent Joseph Smith Papers (JSP) volumes were rolling off the press to high praise, history enthusiasts wondered about the much vaster trove of papers amassed during the three decades of Brigham Young’s tenure as President of the Church (1847–77). Would major portions of that massive archive be published too, including Young’s personal journals? Could such a project uphold the same high academic standards as the JSP volumes from the Church Historian’s Press?

Readers of the just released maiden volume of The Brigham Young Journals (BYJ), covering the years 1832 to 1846 and bearing the BYU Press imprint, will be pleased to see those questions answered in the affirmative. Like its JSP forerunner, this latest tour de force follows the same rigorous documentary editing standards and protocols and is the creation of a select team of JSP historians. As such it marks a milestone in Latter-day Saint historical studies and bodes well for its companion volumes in the years ahead.

Young’s public activities in Utah are amply documented in office journals, meeting minutes, administrative records, civic records, letters, sermons, and more—a written legacy filling tens of thousands of pages! That vast corpus has tantalized admirers and critics alike seeking the sum of the man who saved the splintering Church from collapse, vigorously sought to continue the restoration begun by Joseph Smith, and exerted an outsize influence on western US governance, settlement, and economic expansion.

Despite all the scrutiny, Young, like his beloved prophet Joseph Smith, remains a figure of perennial interest, even an enigma, but one whose private contours obscured by the distance of time are now coming into sharper focus with the publication of his personal journals.

“Brigham Young has long been a person of intrigue and a subject of biographies, exposés, and scholarship,” says historian Brent M. Rogers, who along with Gerrit J. Dirkmaat and Andrew H. Hedges is one of the volume’s editors. “For all that has been written on and about him by others, nothing gives better insight into the life and character of the man than his own writings, of which his personal journals are arguably the most important.”

The general editors are Ronald K. Esplin, who helped conceive and shape the volume, and Dean C. Jessee, whose substantial earlier work on Young’s journals was reworked and expanded by the volume editors (a role entailing considerable research and writing responsibilities).

The result of those labors is the most accurate transcripts to date of Young’s four pre-Utah journals. Three written in his own hand cover the years 1832–45, with the fourth being his Nauvoo office journal kept by secretaries for the period 1844–46.

As Young’s first and most extensive effort at personal journal keeping, these journals give readers rare entrée into Young’s early life and experiences. “Soon after his baptism, the uneducated carpenter ‘preacht as opertunity prezented,’ keeping a record of his missionary travels,” Rogers explains. “Over the next thirteen years, he jotted down entries (often with creative, phonetic spelling), documenting his travels, ministry, and life. In this volume, readers will see Young’s life experiences unfold chronologically following his life-changing baptism in April 1832 until he was prepared to lead Church members west from Nauvoo in February 1846.”

Young’s personal journals mark his development from earnest young preacher to capable and indomitable leader of Latter-day Saint movement. Readers will relish priceless entries related to his fire-in-the-belly missionary zeal, his family life, temple building, his British mission, the succession crisis, his leadership amid growing mob violence, and preparations for the exodus from the United States.

Demanding the Best Effort

This volume was produced in cooperation with the Brigham Young Center, a nonprofit foundation established in 2017 to make Young’s papers easily available online. The center works closely with the Church History Department, where the bulk of the Brigham Young corpus resides.

This initiative is breathless in scope—Young’s papers exceed those of Joseph Smith by a magnitude of ten (keep in mind that the JSP series exceeds two dozen volumes)! Given the daunting size of the corpus, the center will steadily be adding more curated documents online while preparing print volumes of the most important materials.[1]

In a 2018 interview, Hedges noted a driving impulse behind the center’s initiatives: “The vision of the center is to get into the mind of Brigham Young as much as possible, which we can do through his holographic diaries. That’s where we see what he’s thinking. That’s where we see how he expresses himself. That’s where we see the unfiltered Brigham.” He goes on to note that people “think they know who he is, what he said, what he taught, and things like that. But once you get into his personal papers, an entirely different Brigham Young starts to emerge that differs from the assumptions people make.”[2]

Extensive efforts were made to produce accurate transcriptions of Young’s journal entries, a task often complicated not only by his poor spelling and terse style but also by occasional chronological gaps and entries penned in different parts of his journals for needed space. Without the guidance this volume affords, readers would struggle to stay oriented in time and place and to make sense of obscure references and allusions.

“The nature of the documents themselves makes this volume important if not essential,” says Esplin. “Without help, even experienced scholars often labor to understand Young’s handwritten diaries, but this edition allows all readers to follow his travels and learn, year by year, about his life, character, and early ministry.”

“Even with many eyes on the text, some entries remain illegible,” Gerrit Dirkmaat says. “After the creation of the transcript, the historians begin the process of outlining what historical research can be undertaken to help readers make sense of the text. There are many questions raised for which there are no definitive answers. With others, the examination of contemporary sources sheds light.”

Esplin explains that at each stage extensive feedback is often incorporated into successive drafts. The independent scholars who then read the mature draft are not associated with the volume but know the relevant history. “They generate additional feedback—and an even better final product. Source checking helps catch remaining errors and verifies that the sources are not misrepresented. An honest, careful scholar working largely alone often produces quality work. But this collaborative process that produced this volume leads to a product better than any scholar could do alone.” Indeed, it is here where the BYJ historical team shines.

The volume’s annotations include numerous sectional overviews that provide historical context, bridge chronological gaps in Young’s journal entries, and offer other instructive background. Editorial notes and footnotes add a further layer of textual analysis and clarification so readers can better understand the journal text. While the comprehensive textual apparatus is a scholar’s delight, especially for specialists in early Latter-day Saint history and American religious history, it will guide the general reader to greater understanding of Young’s life and times than can be gleaned from reading his journal entries unassisted.

The new volume draws on original sources whenever helpful and feasible, featuring them in the annotation. The journals of Wilford Woodruff are a prime source for additional details and clarifying or corroborating information, as are journals, letters, and other documents from other Church leaders and contemporaries of Brigham Young. Secondary sources are used when they bring together key primary sources and distill useful contextual information.

Once a section of transcriptions and the accompanying annotations are complete, the editorial overviews are written from a position of improved understanding resulting from the rigorous preparatory work.

One example of meticulous research is an entry on Charlotte Bond’s baptism on May 6. The journal entry does not specify a year but appears after an entry dated to 1833, presumably indicating that Bond was baptized that year. But not so fast: the upshot of analysis in the footnote is that modes of transportation and travel times would make a round trip on the same day to the places listed nearly impossible. The facts argue for May 6, 1832, the entry likely being a retrospective one, a tendency that appears elsewhere in Young’s journaling.

Another example of cogent footnoting involves a rather bare entry from September 1845: “Sept 5 went [to] the big field and took dinner with the proprietors.” The footnote conveys the importance of the event: “The Big Field Association was a joint farming cooperative that had pooled resources to farm 3,840 acres outside Nauvoo. The recent harvest had been a spectacular one, boasting 30,000 bushels of corn and 30,000 bushels of wheat, as well as many other crops raised on the land. A celebratory dinner was held by the trustees of the association to which the Twelve and many others were invited. Willard Richards placed the attendance at 616 adults and an unspecified number of children.”

Other obscure journal entries are clarified through maps and reference to water routes, railroad lines, and other historical findings, showing the editors’ attention to detail and distrust of facile analysis. For the BYJ team, this project deserves utmost attention to accuracy—even the most reasonable surmises and conjectural emendations must be subjected to rigorous examination and then cross-examination by multiple experts in what is termed “third-level verification.” This is an exceptionally high standard, but one consistent with world-class documentary editing and historiographical practice.

“Documentary editing done well involves great attention to detail—to the details of the documents and to the details of history,” Esplin says. “Editors of The Joseph Smith Papers, including those who produced the Brigham Young journals, added to a working knowledge of historical research and writing the skills of documentary editing. Leaders of other nationally acclaimed documentary editing projects visited our offices in Salt Lake City and conducted workshops with us.” The JSP historians also traveled back East to learn from other established projects. That preparation led the JSP Project to achieve accreditation by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).

“The almost obsessive attention to detail and insistence on going back to the best original sources that is a hallmark of the Joseph Smith Papers is also evident in this volume of the Brigham Young journals,” Esplin affirms.

Insights and Gems

As might be expected, the scholars who devoted so much time to this project came away with rich insights and perspectives. For Esplin, the holograph journals show that long before Young rose to high offices in the restored Church, he proved to be a stalwart disciple and follower:

“Young’s baptism brought with it a powerful impulse to preach. The ‘fire in his bones’ burned so intensely that he felt that if he did share the message—open his mouth and preach the glad tidings of the Restoration—he would be consumed. In the pages of these journals one can share the journey of a dedicated disciple willing to do his duty no matter the cost, and who gained strength and power through diligence and sacrifice. Though lacking formal training or education, he was filled with the Spirit and learned by doing because he believed with his whole soul in the message of the Restoration.”

“In 1832, Brigham has no idea that he will eventually be called to be an apostle or that he will become the second president of the Church,” Dirkmaat says. “He was just another recently baptized believer desperately trying to help others accept the gospel. It is telling that his first entry includes his first baptism, Rachel Flummerfelt. His next entry describes the baptism of Charlotte Bond and his fourth the baptism of John D. Morgan. Readers will gain an appreciation of not only Young’s devotion to preaching the gospel, but his tireless efforts in doing it.”

Curiously, Young’s journal does not ruminate on the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, the situation being so distressful that Young, away on a mission in the East, could only collect himself (“I felt as tho my head wo[ul]^d crack,” he later recalled) and hasten back to Nauvoo.

Readers are also in for other surprises. While Doctrine and Covenants 136 (January 1847) is often cited as Young’s first recorded revelation as leader of the Church, a January 1846 entry in Young’s journal records an earlier, uncanonized revelation. According to Dirkmaat, “As the Saints were feverishly preparing to leave Nauvoo and the United States, Reuben Miller came to Brigham Young, clearly influenced by the claims of James Strang to be the proper successor to Joseph Smith. Young’s journal records the interaction and the revelation he dictated in response:

yesterday I had some conversation with Reuben Miller of Ottoway, he being considerably bewildered by Strang[’s] new fangled Revelation rendered him almost devoid of Reason although apparently honest in what he was doing & Said that the word of the Lord would be decidedly Satisfactorily to him where upon I Said thus Saith the Lord unto Reuben Miller through Brigham Young that Strang is a wicked & corrupt man & that his revelations are as false as he is -- therefore turn away from his folly & never let it be Said of Reuben Miller that he ever was led away & entangled by Such nonsense.

“This revelation apparently had the desired effect eventually,” Dirkmaat adds. “Although Miller did gather with Strang’s followers for a brief time, he ultimately rejected Strang’s claims and moved west to settle in the Salt Lake Valley. Indeed, Oliver Cowdery’s rebaptism and testimony of the Book of Mormon are recorded in Miller’s journal only two years later. Had Miller decided to continue to follow Strang, historians and members alike would not have the powerful record of Cowdery’s remarks on that occasion.”

Another gem has to do with the intriguing “ME” and “MT” designations that appear at the top of several journal pages. Because some of the dates are associated with plural marriages that can be documented, researchers surmise that the abbreviations stand for “marriage for eternity” and “marriage for time.”

Esplin’s enriched perspective includes Young’s evolving understanding of the centrality of the temple in the unfolding Restoration: “The restoration of priesthood keys and authority and the related knowledge were vital steps, but they had to be received, valued, implemented, brought into action. Young’s later Nauvoo journals underscore how central these things were to him, and how central his commitment to them and oversight of them in connection with the Nauvoo Temple was to the whole enterprise of the Restoration and establishing Zion.”

What’s in Store

Part 1 begins by describing the journals and narrates significant events in Young’s life from his marriages, conversion, and missions to many pivotal events in early Church history in which he was prominently enmeshed: Zion’s Camp, the calling of the Twelve Apostles, the Mormon-Missouri War, the mission to England, the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, temple building, and preparations to move the Saints west from encroaching mob violence in Nauvoo.

Following a précis of the editorial method are the featured verbatim transcripts of the four journals with full annotation as well as photographs, prints, and maps to enrich the presentation. As a readerly convenience, the general editors opted to limit the use of transcription symbols and to prize cogent annotation and historical overviews as means of elucidating the text and clarifying how Brigham Young’s travels and experiences fit into the stream of early Church history.

Part 2 examines the journals as physical artifacts, specifying their dimensions and distinctive characteristics. Included here are miscellaneous items such as random notations, statements, and documents that Young inscribed into his journals, generally without dates and having no obvious chronological purpose. Reference material provides a chronology of Brigham Young’s life through 1846 and an impressive list of places he visited in his tireless missionary efforts, including travel itineraries.

The next BYJ volumes will include all his Utah journals. The office journals will make up the bulk of those volumes, but documents containing other daily entries of Brigham’s life, such as brief travel journals, will be included.

“After the journals, letters may be the most important documents,” says Esplin. “With more than ten thousand outgoing and thirty thousand incoming letters, annotating and publishing all of them would not be possible. But we will publish volumes of selected letters. We also plan, as resources permit, to publish selections of other documents such as sermons, minutes, and unusually important or interesting ‘standalone’ documents.”

“This volume should be the first work consulted on any project involving Brigham Young’s early life before the exodus,” says Dirkmaat. “The subsequent journal volumes will likewise be the most important source to both scholars and Church members wanting to understand Brigham’s life, teachings, personality, and daily activities.”

The Brigham Young Journals, Volume 1: April 1832–February 1846 is available wherever Latter-day Saint books are sold.

Notes

[1] For more on the Brigham Young Center’s purposes and the massive amount of material it contemplates processing and making available online and through printed volumes, see Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Andrew H. Hedges, and Thomas A. Wayment, “The Brigham Young Papers,” BYU Religious Education Review, Fall 2018, 16–21. See also brighamyoungcenter.org.

[2] Dirkmaat, Hedges, and Wayment, “Brigham Young Papers,” 19, 20.