Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Office Journals, 1832–1871

These two volumes constitute one of the most extraordinary collection of documents yet published in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In assessing the value of this collection I agree with John G. Turner, a recent Brigham Young biographer, who rightly points out in the foreword: “As a diarist, Young was no Wilford Woodruff. He lacked his fellow apostle's clear penmanship and literary persistence. . . . [Nevertheless] his diaries, office journals, and travelogues comprise a rich account not only of his life but of the church and territory he governed” (1:ix).The first set of journals published here are Young's four holograph notebooks. Young began keeping them with his baptism on April 9, 1832. These works take us on his preaching missions throughout the nearby region of western New York and the area around Lake Ontario in southern Canada. They follow Young to Kirtland where he met Joseph Smith. They take him to New England and New York. He carried and wrote in them as he participated in the extraordinary success of the Twelve in England. They contain very little about Young's sojourn in Missouri. They contain the entries telling of the journey of Young and his colleagues to Nauvoo after they learned of Joseph Smith's murder and a long entry tells of the meeting on August 8, 1844, when the Saints sustained the Twelve as the church presidency (1:95–96). The entries end in Nauvoo in 1846, though John D. Lee, John P. McEwan, and Evan M. Greene made some of the entries for that year.The quality of the information in the holograph journals varies. Most frequently they consist of information on where Young went, with whom he met, and in a very sketchy way what he did. These are not reflective journals like those of Wilford Woodruff or Anthon H. Lund. Rather they are notes on what he did and where he went to the degree he wrote on particular days. Readers should be aware that he did not keep them steadily.Though Young might quote a revelation of Joseph Smith on occasion, his comments in the holograph journals tend to be very terse. After clerks began to keep the office journals, however, they often quoted Young's comments and observations in the text. For those journals kept during the period in which Young wrote, George Smith did an excellent job of deciphering Young's phonetic writing and adding parenthetical text to help the reader to understand the meaning. Young said that he had only eleven days of schooling, and the journals confirm that, especially by their phonetic spelling.Unfortunately, Smith found no journals for 1847 and 1848, so the journals do not provide a source to use for understanding the exodus to Utah. Fortunately, clerks kept the remainder of the journals down to September 1863, plus travel journals that tell part of the story to 1871. The best of these report on Brigham Young's activities. The least useful merely say that he was either in or out of the office.A number of clerks kept the office journals for Young. Some of these were Thomas Bullock, William Clayton, John V. Long, Daniel Mackintosh, Thomas W. Ellerbeck, and George Sims. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Edyth Romney, a longtime employee of the Church Historian's Office, who made typescripts of many of the journals.If you planned to consult the journals to determine what Young did in connection with the Mountain Meadows Massacre you would be disappointed. The entry of September 8, 1857, and subsequent entries report the visit of Capt. Stewart L. Van Vliet seeking supplies for the Utah Expedition marching and riding toward Utah. James Haslam came to Salt Lake to ask for counsel on Isaac Haight's proposed plan to attack a party of Arkansas emigrants during Van Vliet's visit. Haslam's conversation with Young appears nowhere in the journal. We do find, however, Young's proclamation of martial law that followed Van Vliet's visit as the army approached Fort Bridger.Nevertheless, we do find: “The Prest observed to Capt. Hooper that ^if^ he ^was^ questioned about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and asked why he [Young] had not brought the guilty parties to justice [, he should say] the Prest observed [to him that] if law and justice could take place no one could be more willing than he would be [to cooperate]” (2:77). On another matter, however, Young said: “Prest also remarked [that] if Joseph Smith the beloved Prophet was here, he wo[u]ld say that Aaron Johnson was a thorough good man, and one of the best men who had stood by him” (2:133). Evidence indicates that Johnson ordered the Parrish-Potter murders while he served as Springville bishop.On the whole, George Smith did an excellent job of editing the journal, especially in supplying the information in the notes. He has offered the reader extremely valuable service by identifying virtually everyone about whom he could find information, including a number of relatively obscure people. In some cases, this reviewer marveled at the amount of effort Smith must have put forth to search out the information published in the notes about some of the people identified in the text. In many cases he was successful in finding the numbers of wives each man married, the number of men each woman married, which wives were first or plural wives, and how many children each wife had.In several cases, however, the editor's notes missed the mark. In the first volume, the editor wrote of surveyor general David H. Burr: “After being threatened with violence for being in the employ of the federal government, he fled the territory” (1:468n68). In fact, Burr's deputies, especially Charles Mogo, conducted fraudulent surveys and reported surveys they did not do. The government paid them for these frauds. The Latter-day Saints complained about the shoddy and incomplete work and, unfortunately, Bill Hickman and some of his cronies raided Burr's office. Nevertheless, an investigation by Burr's successor, Samuel C. Stambaugh, revealed that Burr had cheated the government and the Mormons just as the latter had complained. The threats of violence occurred not because Burr worked for the government, but because of the fraudulent surveys his deputies conducted.In volume one, the editor wrote: [Joseph] Smith “died in a jailhouse gunfight . . . ” (1:114n1). This hardly explains the reason for the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. It is true that in the jail Hyrum had a single shot pistol and Joseph had a six shooter with which he fired three shots. On the other hand, members of a militia unit, fully armed, stormed the jail. The militiamen gave no quarter, and they murdered the Smith brothers in cold blood and wounded the unarmed John Taylor. Later the editor corrects this slip by writing that “Smith was arrested and killed in a jailhouse ambush in 1844” (2:117n206).The Mormons did not “seize the fort [Bridger],” they purchased it for $8,000 in gold (1:17n171). The deed to the fort, dated August 3, 1855, was recorded October 21, 1858, in Salt Lake City in Records Book B, page 128. Bridger's and Vasquez's names were signed by H. F. Morrell, apparently with a power of attorney, in the presence of Alinerin Grow and William Adams Hickman.The journals reveal that Young met frequently with friends, associates, and visitors. Various Saints would come to the office to ask advice about what they should do with their lives, occupations, and families and he would offer them counsel. Young met in the office as well with visitors such as Orion and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), famous foreign travelers, and others virtually unknown to history who simply dropped in or whom one of his associates escorted to the office. Young met with Indians in his office in what appear to have been friendly conversations (see for instance: 2:291).The entries tell of signing letters, some of which the clerks simply wrote on his instructions and of his interest in events of the day. The journal cites the location in Young's papers where clerks copied the letters. The office journals show that during the period from 1860 to 1861 while the Pony Express operated, Young sponsored a Pony Express Club made up of friends and associates who listened to a clerk read dispatches of the latest news. They also show that Young regularly had clerks read dispatches, newspapers, and other texts to him rather than reading them himself.Young apparently considered himself an authority on certain aspects of medicine. For instance, he favored Thomsonian medicine over academic medicine and lobelia over calomel (2:384). The journals also report such details as the extraction of Young's teeth by Frank Fuller (the territorial secretary who was also a dentist) and Dr. John Dunyon, and the fitting of a set of false teeth by Frank Fuller (2:382, 387, 389).Although Young held no public office after his removal in 1858, the journals show that he concerned himself with and gave advice on political affairs. He participated in the nomination of officers for public positions including the nomination of Judge John Fitch Kinney, a Gentile, for territorial delegate (2:394). He sent letters to Congress and Abraham Lincoln supporting the statehood constitution drafted in1862, an effort that came to naught.In this reviewer's estimation, the holograph journals, and especially office journals and the journals of Young's ministering and instructing journeys—usually published as appendices—are extremely valuable. George Smith has done an excellent job of reproducing and annotating them for publication. Those written by conscientious clerks, rather than the clerks who simply mentioned that Young was in or out of the office, reveal a great deal about Young's everyday life and his experiences while traveling among the Saints.Anyone who does research on Latter-day Saint history or who has an interest in the subject or on Brigham Young's life should have a copy of these extremely valuable books at hand. They provide the text written by Young and his clerks with excellent notes written by the editor that provide readers with information readers could not obtain simply by reading the original text or microfilmed or digitally reproduced copies. Smith has provided a service by making these writings accessible that has not been available in any other medium.

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