Brigham Young, Gap-Toothed Mimic

On Saturday, here in this very space, I posted a couple of references to the alleged “transfiguration” of Brigham Young that is said by quite a few to have occurred while he was speaking to an outdoor audience of Latter-day Saints at Nauvoo, Illinois, on 8 August 1844.  (See “Two Witnesses to a Pivotal Event.”)  This speech, of course, was given in the wake of the 27 June 1844 assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith that had left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints without clear leaders.  On that same topic, I came across this passage during my reading, a few months ago, of “God Has Made Us a Kingdom”: James Strang and the Midwest Mormons, written by Vickie C. Speek:

William Hickenlooper later wrote to his son and daughter, both Strangites, explaining in 1855 his decision to follow Brigham Young and trying to convince them to leave Strang. “The first evidence I received that Brigham was the true successor of Joseph, was on the day when Sidney [Rigdon] set up his claim for the presidency,” he wrote. “Brigham’s countenance his voice, gestures and everything truly represented the martyred prophet in such a striking manner I shall never forget—I was convinced by the spirit of the Lord that the mantle of Joseph had fallen on Brigham.”  S. S. Thornton responded to his father-in-law, explaining his conversion to Strang: I shall show by successful contradiction by your own arguments that he (Brigham Young) is an usurper, and has acted as such ever since Joseph’s death. Because Mr. Young had tried to mimic Joseph for several years before his death, and on his return from Boston after his (Joseph’s) martyrdom even went out and got a dentist to take out a tooth on the same side that Joseph lost one, to make himself appear as much like him as possible, that even his voice, gestures and likeness would seem like Joseph, and did, at the August conference, as you related, which was evidence to you that he was the man Joseph appointed, yet it is no evidence without he had come in at the gate, and been ordained, as the Lord had told Joseph before, which was by an angel.

The passage struck me because the exchange between William Hickenlooper and S. S. Thornton is relatively early, and because it clearly indicates that the claim of a “transfiguration” was already known both in the Great Basin West and in the Upper Midwest within eleven years of the alleged event.  Please note that Thornton doesn’t appear to be surprised by the claim.  Neither does he deny that something seems to have happened.  Quite to the contrary, he freely if implicitly grants that Brigham Young seemed to look and act and sound like Joseph Smith, but he attributes the similarities to an unrecorded program of deliberate mimicry and to a dental operation that not only sounds bizarre (and, given the state of mid-nineteenth-century dentistry, sounds extraordinarily painful) but for which, so far as I know, there isn’t so much as a scrap of actual supporting evidence.

Interpreter Radio Show — March 10, 2024

For the 10 March 2024 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show, Mark Johnson and Martin Tanner and Terry Hutchinson and Kevin Christensen — that’s four! — discussed Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon lesson 14, the purchase of the Kirtland Temple, and Deuteronomists in the Book of Mormon.  Their conversations are now available to you online, free of charge and at your convenience, and without commercial interruptions.

The “Book of Mormon in Context” portion of this show, for the Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon lesson 14, will also be posted separately on Tuesday, March 26.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard live and without a safety net on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640.   Alternatively, you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

“An Apostle’s Letter to a Missionary Son: Elder Spencer W. Kimball discusses being “In” and “Out of the Spirit”” (transcribed and edited by Dennis B. Horne)

I’m also delighted to report that I was involved for much of the day — quite uselessly, I might add — with the recording of an interview of Don Norton by Shirley Ricks.  (See the brief article about Don among the 2018 recipients of the LDSPMA Lifetime Achievement Award and the brief article about Shirley among the 2019 recipients.).  Russell Richins and James Jordan — two thirds of our core team of filmmakers — kindly devoted several hours to filming the interview, as well as to the complicated and time-consuming task of setting up (and taking down) cameras and lights and microphones and reflectors and etc. and etc.  And Dr. Lynn T. Dayton and Margaret Dayton generously allowed us the use of their living room for the session.

Don is virtually legendary as the teacher and mentor of editors across Brigham Young University and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and beyond, and he served for a decade as a volunteer editor for the Interpreter Foundation.  He is also well-known as an oral historian, so it was fitting that he sat, today, for the recording of something of his own oral history.  Between them, Don and Shirley were the production editors for the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (CWHN), so that effort of theirs — along with their experiences with and impressions of Professor Nibley — was a significant focus of the interview.  Given the fact that there is much else on our filmmakers’ plate right now, it will certainly take a while for the interview to be edited and published online, but we need to capture it while we had the opportunity, and I’m very much looking forward to it.  I think that many will enjoy what Don Norton has to say, and that it will be a small, niche, but nice contribution to the historical record of the Restoration in the latter half of the twentieth century and, via the CWHN, into the twenty-first.