August 2021
Discovering Church History: The Wilford Woodruff Papers Project, presented by Jennifer Ann Mackley
Scott Gordon
Our next speaker is Jennifer Ann Mackley. She’s the Executive Director of the Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation, which she co-founded with Donald Perry in 2020. In addition to her legal practices partner in Mackley & Mackley, PLLC, Jennifer has authored or edited 21 books, including Wilford Woodruff’s Witness: Development of Temple Doctrine. She’s been serving as a historian for the Wilford Woodruff Family Association since 2014 and has made numerous presentations and podcasts based on her research. So, with that, let’s welcome Jennifer Mackley.
Jennifer Ann Mackley
I want to thank all of you for being here. I’m the last one of the day, so thanks for sticking it out. And also, I want to thank Scott for inviting me to come and introduce the Wilford Woodruff Papers Project. So, as he stated, I’m the executive director, and I haven’t been out in public since March 1 of 2020, when we announced the beginning of the foundation. I’m a two-time transplant recipient, so I have been holed up and carefully hoping that the whole world would figure this out before I left my house again.
I have been astonished at the scholarship that I’ve heard over the last few days. And I mentioned to someone earlier, I feel like I’m wearing intellectual flip flops at a black-tie affair. So, thank you for your patience with me as a non-academic, but one who has studied the life of Wilford Woodruff for the past 25 years and have come to appreciate the work that all of you do.
To begin with, I would like to explain the title of my presentation: Discovering Church History. I think there’s a couple of meanings to that word. And in this setting, I think the first is our own seeking and our own study, to discover church history and what we as a collective group offer to others who are seeking truth. I also believe that the Wilford Woodruff Papers is a great asset to that body of scholarship and will provide more information and more documents and the ability to study more church history to add to the great group that we already have. And the third is what Wilford Woodruff offers himself. It’s not just the words that he’s recorded, but his example of living according to the truth that he knew, and doing so completely, and from the very first day that he heard about the church in 1833.
To begin with, I would like to share the story – true story – of a young man who was searching for truth and began his study of the Scriptures with his older brother, at the age of 14. His approach was to study the scriptures, to pray, to look at the churches around where he lived, to find one that mirrored the gospel that Jesus had taught, but also the church that he had organized. And the two of them searched for 10 years and weren’t able to find one that not only was patterned after what Paul taught the Ephesians about apostles and prophets and evangelists and teachers, but when that believed in the gifts of the Spirit, and the miracles that follow those who are faithful.
So, after 10 years, he approached the local minister that he been talking to in the past and asked if he would baptize him by immersion; at least he could do that to follow the example of the Savior. And the Minister agreed but was surprised that this young man then chose not to join his congregation, because he felt the doctrines that were taught were not the same as what Christ had taught.
It was a following year when he was 25 years old that he first encountered anything about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And true to form, it was negative. It was an article written to ridicule the church to mock the origin story of the Book of Mormon and the idea that continuing revelation was possible. I don’t know – of course, this is preaching to the choir here.
But I think everybody, every one of us, those who are seeking truth, or those who have found truth, and then fallen away or those who continue to do their best to follow the truths that they know, every one of us will find something that will stop us in our tracks, whether that’s a criticism, a quote, out of context, a document that may rattle our world. And our reaction to it will determine whether we, I don’t know, pick up all our toys and go to find a different sandbox.
But in this case, this young man was not shocked by what he read, he was intrigued, because it was exactly what he was looking for. He was intrigued by the information on Divine Manifestations and continuing revelation and modern prophets. But there was no branch or ward within his area, so that’s as far as it went. Until 18 months later, two brand new missionaries knocked on these two brothers’ door, the first door that they’d knocked on. And the reception of their message was immediate. And both brothers chose to be baptized two days later.
Not all stories end that way. That’s why there are organizations like FAIR, and many of the others that we’ve heard about to counteract the messages to help others overcome the misunderstandings or the misinformation. And this could have happened to any of us today. My son, your cousin, your neighbor, me. And the criticisms haven’t changed much in 200 years. And the response, the resolution to misinformation is the same. We have to continue seeking, we have to continue studying and the more information we have, the more truth we have, the easier will be to understand those things in context.
So, our purpose in Wilford Woodruff Papers is to do just that. And the young convert that I spoke of wasn’t someone who read something in 2020, or 2021. It was in 1833. And his name was Wilford Woodruff. I’ve studied his life for 25 years, and I have come to admire him. And the faith that he’s taught me, was the reason that I ended up writing the book that I did. Partly because my husband encouraged me to share the 27,000 documents that amounts to my research; maybe, in part because he hoped that maybe I’d share all these things with somebody else instead of always bothering him.
But it all started with my mother sharing with me the story of Wilford Woodruff’s experience in the St. George temple. And my education, my legal training made me want to find the primary sources, not the books that other people had written about what he thought or what he said. But what he actually wrote. And his records are remarkable because they’re not vague memories. They’re not recollections of a wonderful life. They’re his daily observations, the ups and downs of the experience that he had, joining a church of about 3,000, run by a young man only two years older than he was, and one that began and ended in very trying circumstances. And yet he didn’t falter.
He experienced the same things that others did. He wasn’t unique in church history. But his record is unique. And part of that is because he tells the truth, and it’s unvarnished, it’s unfiltered. And it’s contemporary, contemporaneous. It’s personal.
So, we’re all familiar with the oath a witness takes: to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And the work that we’re doing, together, all of these various organizations with incredible websites and incredible information is adding to that truth. Wilford Woodruff has been the thread that church history has followed since the first compilation of church history in the 1850s. And now, with the recent publication of Saints, his record still provides that thread that ties all of this together. And he will get us exponentially closer to the whole truth.
When I first published my book, I was asked if it was an apologetic work – I didn’t know what that meant. First, I’m not apologizing for anything. But I now have I’ve learned some other languages, at least one word – that one – and understand. For me, anyway, defending our faith isn’t an intellectual argument alone. To address the religious and doctrinal elements is one thing, but we also have cultural and philosophical ideas that we need to incorporate. And I think what we’re doing is a full time and a lifetime pursuit, it’s not a casual job that we’ve undertaken.
So, I think our personal conversion may be spiritual, intellectual, we’re supposed to know in our minds in our hearts: but it’s an entirely different level of understanding to share those beliefs with someone else, and to help them understand truth. That will counter the alternative versions that they’ve already been exposed to. I also think that defending our faith requires a constant mining of church history. The Wilford Woodruff Papers Project is part of that new church history.
I’m often asked, haven’t his journals already been published? What else could we mine from his information? He wrote or received over 32,000 letters, and only 1% of them have been transcribed. So, the letters alone will provide a much more personal and much more intimate look at the daily lives of those he interacted with, as well as himself and other church leaders.
He also has autobiographies, he wrote the histories of other apostles, and experienced what they did. But again, his record is unique, not just because he lived longer than them, but because of how he recorded it and what he recorded. So, his strength is to provide the truth, but also his example of living the truth. And we can all find ourselves in his stories.
We didn’t have to cross the plains to understand what it means to sacrifice and how obedience leads to faith. If we’re dealing with divorce, or family relationships that are difficult, he knows something about that. He had 10 wives and 38 children, and five of his wives divorced him. If we’re suffering from the loss of a loved one, he lost 13 of his children. His mother died when he was 15 months old. And six of his – well, all six of his half siblings died. The loss of his beloved wife Phoebe was a very difficult time for him – twice. Once he brought her back to life and the other time he had to stand and watch her funeral. So, it’s not an unfamiliar story of faith. But it is a record that only Wilford Woodruff wrote and a story that only he can tell.
If you look at the records in church history, the Joseph Smith Papers are 16 years: 1828-1844. What Wilford Woodruff wrote is 65 years of history. And again, it’s not important just because he outlived these other great men in history, but because his record is different. And the most, the greatest example of what he adds to church history is the development of Temple doctrine.
The purpose that I understand of apologetics is, again, not to just defend the faith for the sake of winning an intellectual argument, but to help people understand the truth so they can embrace it and live it and be blessed by it. And there’s no more greater blessing than the temple. And there’s no more important thread that runs through church history, than the temple doctrine that Joseph Smith introduced, but didn’t live to complete or carry out.
To briefly go through what it took me 450 pages to explain in my book, the understanding of sealing power developed over Joseph Smith’s lifetime; it took him 21 years to finally explain the mission of Elijah. And it began with the understanding that baptism was adoption into the house of Israel in the kingdom of God. And then as that understanding progressed, it wasn’t sealing just of ordinances or covenants, but finally sealing of individuals to each other, that there could be a welding link beyond death.
One of the things that I remember from my mission is a gentleman who had a pamphlet called “How to testify to a Mormon.” And he wanted to talk about the Trinity, that God is a Spirit without body, parts and passions. And his evidence from the pamphlet was Christ’s statement recorded in Luke 24:39. Conveniently, however, the statement said, “a spirit hath not flesh and bones.” They left off the end of the statement, as you see me have. So, church history in context means that those people who read that pamphlet — they never open the Bible — will have a distorted picture of the truth and base their lives on something that isn’t true.
The development of Temple doctrine is astonishing to me, not only because of how mercifully the Lord introduced what needed to happen, but how each step through the temple organization, through the recording of the ceremonies, through the administration of all the ordinances, we got to step up. Members of the church were able to understand what it meant to be saviors on Mount Zion, that God’s work and glory depends on us that we’re participants in that work.
And every revelation that occurred, Wilford Woodruff would record the reaction, his personal feelings about the shaft of light he felt had descended from heaven, how universal salvation was more evidence of God’s mercy and justice than anything he’d ever understood in his life. He spent famously, ten of his first 15 years in the church on missions, but he spent 65 years teaching the gospel, sharing the gospel with those on both sides of the veil. And he understood Joseph’s role in that but also that it didn’t happen in Joseph’s lifetime.
Three months before Joseph Smith was killed, when he was asked the question, “What is the office and mission of Elijah,” he said, “It is one of the greatest important, most important subjects that God has revealed, to seal those who dwell on earth to those who dwell in heaven.” And he said, “This is the power of Elijah, we understand the keys of the kingdom of heaven are the sealing keys.” But his instruction to the saints was to go and seal themselves and their sons and daughters to their fathers and eternal glory. Joseph Smith did not administer that ordinance in his lifetime.
Brigham Young was the one who was able to first administer that ordinance. And in addition, introduce the law of adoption, the sealing into another’s priesthood lineage, something that was part of temple ordinances, until the revelation that Wilford Woodruff received in 1894. So, understanding this critical change in the development of temple doctrine and understanding Wilford’s role in it is life-changing, is something that particularly the rising generation has lost sight of. And many of us don’t understand. If we said “the law of adoption” to 90% of church members, they may never have heard of it. And yet, that is something that comes up in their family history work, in their understanding of why their great-grandfather was sealed to George Q. Cannon instead of their great-great-grandfather.
The 30 years in between the Nauvoo Temple and the St. George Temple was a difficult time for the saints, but also a struggle to maintaining the ordinances that had started in the Nauvoo Temple. Some ordinances were suspended; some were discontinued. And some were administered in various non temple locations like the endowment house, or the council house or Brigham Young’s office, even in members’ homes. And the highest ordinances, which was the sealing of parents to children, and the law of adoption, were not performed in this interim period.
So, it wasn’t until the St. George temple that all ordinances for both living, and the dead were administered. The first proxy ordinations, the first proxy endowments, and the first sealings. One generation. The feeling at that time was that you could only seal – as Joseph had instructed in 1840 – you can only do the ordinances for those who were worthy. And if it was for someone outside your family, then a ministering Angel needed to come and authorize that.
So as Joseph Smith, Brigham Young only lived for months after these ordinances started in the St. George temple, and he was unable to complete what Joseph Smith had explained as the mission of Elijah. And during this period, it was Wilford Woodruff, who presided over first the St. George temple, and then those trained in the St. George temple, trained those in the Logan and Manti, and then Salt Lake temples. But Wilford Woodruff presided over again, the ordinances that were adapted to new temple structures, the ordinances that were refined, the first written ceremonies, and the discontinuing of ordinances including rebaptism, and adoption. And it was 50 years after Joseph Smith’s death – 50 years and one month after Joseph Smith explained what the office and mission of Elijah was about.
When Wilford Woodruff received the revelation ending the law of adoption and beginning multigenerational sealings. It was April 1894 conference, and he assured the saints that they had done well: that they had acted up to all the light and knowledge that they had, but there was more to be revealed. And it wasn’t just more to be revealed, for them, but it was to satisfy God.
He reiterated, almost word for word, what Joseph Smith had explained in March of 1844, that the saints needed to trace their genealogies as far as they could. And that meant information on those that had died, those that had perhaps even disowned family members for joining the church or been unfaithful during their lifetimes. Because he said, “it is only if we do this, to run this chain as far as we can, that then we will do exactly what God intended when he declared he would send Elijah in the last days.”
So, for many, it was a difficult thing. There were about 13,000 adoptions performed and the understanding of what would happen or what needed to happen with those was a question. But this is only one example of the unique account that Wilford Woodruff has, that helps us understand truth, to help us get closer to the whole truth, to understand truth in context.
And to accomplish what Joseph understood but wasn’t able to do; what Brigham Young had an inclination of, an understanding of, and was not able to finish; why it took 71 years, from Moroni’s introduction of Elijah’s mission to this revelation would take a book to explain. But it’s one of the most important topics that we can understand.
The mission of the Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation is to publish everything that Wilford Woodruff ever wrote, that has survived, to share his eyewitness account of the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ for those 65 years. But more important than his words, are his stories. And to make those records universally accessible is with the hope that will inspire all people, but especially the rising generation, to study and increase their faith in Jesus Christ. And better understand the temple.
This slide is because the first question I usually get is, how do you compare apples to apples with the Joseph Smith papers in the Wilford Woodruff papers? When we met with the church history department to get their support, their access to records, their understanding of what we were doing, and what and to gain their knowledge of what they had done, they basically said, “Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?” And the answer is, yes, the exponential difference in the number of documents between the Joseph Smith papers and the Wilford Woodruff papers is something we do understand, because he wrote everything down.
We know exactly how many letters he wrote. And we have found 6,329 of those. We know exactly how many discourses he gave: 3,995. And we’ve been able to locate 935 of those. The total number of pages is yet to be determined. But the way that that Joseph Smith Papers, labels or categorizes their documents is: an original document is one that was the first recording of it, not the one that was published in the newspaper, or the one that was published in the millennial star, to try to get back to the original writing, or the first record of it, or the most complete record of it. So, we are just starting that process. The Discourses won’t be started until March of 2022.
But we do have a record of every letter, in fact the catalog is about a million cells of data at this point. And as I said before, the mining of that information to understand that it is actually new church history, that it’s never been published before, is exciting. I have seen the marketing, the amazing websites that that other speakers have talked about. And I don’t know why anybody needs marketing. When you get to read this stuff for free, it’s just… why would you need to convince somebody to do that? I get up every morning so excited that this is what I get to do.
But as Evidence Central and those kinds of things, to make it accessible is one thing. It’s an open access website that we’ve set up. But that doesn’t mean people are going to come. And part of the beauty of technology is the context that you can put these things in.
So, to give you a quick idea of how we’re approaching this, these are several of the documents, samples that we’re working with. This is two pages of a four-page letter that Wilford Woodruff wrote, some of this is impossible to read. We call it “Wilfordish” because it’s not really English. His spelling is so creative, that there’s no way that any computer could follow it. Also, there’s no way to decipher it. We have people that have offered to use AI or something like that but it’s truly – he includes Deseret alphabet, Pitman shorthand, Taylor shorthand, and his own version of all those. So, it’s an adventure.
This is two pages of his journal. Again, you just have to kind of let your brain relax when you look at these things. Because if you try to decipher letter by letter, it’s impossible.
This is the first draft of his autobiography written in 1857. He’s famous for his near-death experiences and accidents. And this is the first writing of what happened.
So, the text editor we’re using is from the page. It’s an open access editing site, and there are hundreds of papers, projects and other projects. Even the Library of Congress is doing crowdsourcing transcription of documents, which is what we’re using as well, so if any of you have an hour or two or even 10 minutes, you can get a free account, sign up and read a Wilford Woodruff document to be the first one to ever do it. And we’d be thrilled for your participation. The coding is the HTML. And those kinds of things are, are built into the system. So, it helps very much. We have volunteers from the age of 15, to the age of 86, right now. And they’re incredible.
So, this is what the text editor produces for us, which is an understanding of which documents have things needed to be done, whether that’s transcription or verification. And our first upload was March 1 of this year, and we had 1500 pages, which only represented about eight documents.
So, the website is beautifully designed, as it needs to be. Again, I don’t know why you need to ask anybody to read these things, they should just wake up wanting to. But this is a colorized image of Wilford Woodruff. And it’s the earliest image found of any of our church leaders.
On the website, again, it’s not just the documents, it’s the context for those documents, understanding the people he interacted with, their stories, their lives, their relationship with church. The last speaker spoke of Joseph Smith’s candidacy for the President of the United States and his running mate could have been Solomon Copeland. Wilford Woodruff, taught him, healed his wife, baptized his wife and two other people on there in their household and wrote a letter asking him if he would be the vice-presidential candidate; you can find that information on the website.
Once we transcribe a document, then it moves to the website, and you can see the five autobiographies here. And so, on September 1, the other six autobiographies will be uploaded and we will have finished all of the autobiographies. Through the amazing technology, you can then go to these documents and click on hyperlinked people, places, topics.
This one, for example, is Wilford Woodruff’s father, Aphek Woodruff.
And if you hover over the name, you can see the information or you can click on the “View More” button and see the complete bio, the footnotes and then the list of all 131 documents that he’s mentioned in.
The text editor produces these connections, and whether he’s referred to as “my father” or “Aphek”, or “Father Woodruff” it will go to the same person and connect him in any way that he’s referenced in the documents.
The other thing is a visual and interactive timeline. So, when I was doing my research, I had to keep a notebook. Like when you read War and Peace, you have to write down all the different characters and try to keep them all straight. So, the timeline became Wilford Woodruff’s life in the context of church and US history.
And not only can you click on the items throughout his, there’s 100 years on the timeline, but also will be able to link directly to the documents that they reference. For example, in the journals were only up to 1846. So, the rest of the 50 years will be forthcoming. And this is just the chronological timeline.
The people are divided alphabetically.
We have over 5,000 so far that he’s mentioned in his documents, and then a special section for his wives and his children.
And finally, the images that we’ve been able to find. We’ve identified 82 and found 68 of them.
So the work of transcription is not just to share his words, but to share the stories in his records that build faith and to bring people to Christ by helping them understand how difficult family relationships can become eternal ones and how our understanding of our relationship with our Heavenly Father, faith in ourselves as children of God will lead ultimately to Faith in Our Savior and the salvation and exaltation that his atonement can provide for us. I have a testimony of the truth that has been revealed through the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And much of what I’ve come to understand is through the testimony and the life of Wilford Woodruff and his testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith. So, my interest in publishing the Wilford Woodruff papers, my interest in defending my own faith, and the truths that I know is not to win an intellectual argument, but to share with the hope that others will better understand the truth. And, like Wilford Woodruff, embrace it and live according to it. And I leave these things with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Q & A
Scott Gordon
Thank you, that was really interesting. You’re certainly doing a lot of work there. It looks like we fun to do a little bit of almost like indexing for family history. We could do that for the Wilford Woodruff stuff.
Jennifer Ann Mackley
That’s exactly right.
Scott Gordon
That will be for you. So, a few questions we received from the audience. Wilford Woodruff’s revelation on Temple doctrine is very significant in how we view the plan of salvation today. Why haven’t his contributions been canonized?
Jennifer Ann Mackley
I’d vote for that. I don’t know. I don’t know why, the – for example, the official declaration is part of our scriptures. But that revelation would, to me rise to the level of Joseph F. Smith’s. However, he didn’t record the words of the revelation. Just gave the instructions in general conference.
Scott Gordon
Can you tell us more about the transference of sealings after March 20, 1894?
Jennifer Ann Mackley
Transference?
Scott Gordon
That’s just what they wrote. Could you tell us more about the transference? That’s okay. We’ll go on.
Jennifer Ann Mackley
Well, I’ll guess about the difference between the law of adoption the sealings to priesthood lineage and the sealings to biological or, in my case, I’ve adopted a daughter. And Wilford Woodruff’s instructions were that if someone wanted to cancel that sealing, that was fine. But it was explained more like, you’ve got two solid connections. So, there’s no need to undo those sealings. But you could also add the biological sealing.
Scott Gordon
Will you be releasing a book series like the Joseph Smith papers?
Jennifer Ann Mackley
So, our approach in that way is that our target audience is the rising generation, and they don’t read books; they access online. And so, although books are very important, we want to focus solely on the online publication so that everyone has access to it, and no one has to buy anything. But also, the ability to use technology to combine all of these things, is a critical part of reaching the rising generation. And we hope that scholars and those of you who are superiorly, intellectually and theologically educated more than I am, will build on this and that’s where the scholarship will come from.
Publishing his books: there are plans to do that – selections, like his words of wisdom to his children, but also just topical publications based on, you know, things like leadership or patriotism or honesty, joy. So, we are publishing those online and 10 years down the road, when we finish the transcription, then perhaps that will be a focus. We also have our first symposium coming up next year, and we’ll continue to share as much of the information as we can as quickly as possible.
Scott Gordon
We’ll have to make sure we advertise your symposium on FAIR, so please make sure you let us know all the information on that so our members could go. With how idiosyncratic Wilford Woodruff’s writing system was, am I understanding your images correctly, that his wife knew how to decode and read it, and did anyone else other than her know how to do that?
Jennifer Ann Mackley
Truly, if you stare at it long enough, it kind of jumps off the page. We have actually a Rosetta Stone that we use with our transcription. I have put all the images of all of the idiosyncratic writing into basically a spreadsheet, but we use it with numbers and words, he consistently drops vowels, and if he uses a Y, or a G or a D. And so, it is something that you can understand, but it’s truly like, I don’t know, hieroglyphics that it’s a Wilford Woodruff letter. There’s nothing like it in the world. But they did correspond and must have understood each other because they’re, they’re answering each other’s letters. So –
Scott Gordon
So, this person is recommending that if you create an AI that can decode and read his writing that you named the AI program, Phoebe.
Jennifer Ann Mackley
Very nice. Very good suggestion. I like that.
Scott Gordon
Yeah, there’s an ask for information on the symposium. I’m sure you can get that to us, and we’ll send it out on our newsletter, if that’s okay. Can you elaborate on the story of Wilford Woodruff bringing Phoebe back to life?
Jennifer Ann Mackley
Yes. They were asked to gather the saints from the northeast and bring them to Nauvoo. And Phoebe had had a very difficult year when Wilford was injured in Winter Quarters, she was pregnant. And Wilford was almost crushed to death, didn’t finish building their cabin. Their youngest son died shortly thereafter. And she gave birth prematurely, and that son died within a few hours. So, the daughter that they had was about two when they were leaving Winter Quarters to go back East. They lost their daughter as well.
And Phoebe became ill with what is described as “brain fever.” And as they traveled Wilford describes her basically dying in the wagon; they were able to revive her, they got to a house, where they thought that maybe just getting her to a better environment, not the wagon, or the carriage, would help. But she died there and describes her spirit leaving her body and, and he felt that loss and, and yet, was able to give her a blessing and restore her to life. And she remained weak and those who she was with – the women and the other people traveling with them – were very careful to care for her. And she did completely recover and lived another 40 years. But it’s a remarkable experience. And for us, to be able to read the intimacy of those kinds of things, is incredible.
Scott Gordon
So how is the Wilford Woodruff Papers Project funded?
Jennifer Ann Mackley
Private donations. So, we established the foundation as a nonprofit, and I donated $5,000, to start. My legal training, I was able to do all the documents and those kinds of things. But we formed a board and the Wilford Woodruff family, the announcement was made with their support, on March 1, which is Wilford Woodruff’s birthday, and then as we formed our board, each of our board members donated and then we have had incredibly generous donations come from those who have been transcribing, those who have donated online, and just family foundations.
Our mission is to complete the Wilford Woodruff papers by 2030. And the budget equals to about a million dollars a year. But we are ahead of schedule. For example, our goal for the first two years was to complete 600 letters. And we’ve already done that and will complete the journals by next year. So, it’s moving much more rapidly than we expected due to the ability to crowdsource and the volunteers that are stepping forward. And not only those who are able to write a check, but those who are personally investing themselves in it, we don’t have a Larry and Gail Miller type of foundation. We don’t have 100 PhDs and incredibly talented historians, like the Joseph Smith Papers.
But miracles have happened. And this level of scholarship is as high as any papers project. That is in part due to Steve Harper, as our executive editor and the involvement of Rick Turley and many who have worked on the Joseph Smith papers, to advise us and help us to avoid the mistakes and capitalize on the assets and incredible people that are out there.
Scott Gordon
And with that, with listing those names that kind of says what the relationship is with your organization and the church, there’s obviously some close communication, at least with the groups, yes?
Jennifer Ann Mackley
Yes, our first in-person meeting was June 24. And Elder Cook spoke and Elder Curtis, that church historian, and Matt Grow that the executive director, Managing Director of the church history department had been incredibly supportive. I often get asked why the church isn’t doing the Wilford Woodruff papers. And there’s probably three reasons.
First of all, the Joseph Smith papers has taken 20 years, and it’s 2500 documents. So, it would take 100 years or more for the church to do this. The church history department has other things to do, and they feel like they’ve set the pattern; actually, they set the standards so high, no other papers projects will ever meet the Joseph Smith papers standard. But it’s considered an inside job. And so, they do have to do it at a higher level than other papers projects would need. But they want this to be done by non-church organization: meaning, taking that to the level that we can without the burden of the bureaucracy or the funding or tying up all those other resources.
It’s also a legal issue. It’s also not just a time and money issue, and that it’s something that, like President Hinckley said, you know, there’s lots of good causes and good things to do. I know the Brigham Young papers has already started. And what, who sometimes is referred to John Taylor, the lost prophet. His descendants are participating with us because of the close relationship between John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff. But hopefully, a great organization will start his papers as well.
Scott Gordon
So, I picked up a copy of your book, Wilford Woodruff’s witness: the development of Temple doctrine. And I went to one of my go-to people around here and said, have you read this book? What do you think about it? And her comment was, it’s the book I recommend to everybody. So, I’ve looked through it, it talks about the Book of Abraham in the use of the temple, it talks about masonry, it talks about an interesting list of Temple questions they had, like did you have you, did you use irrigation water where you shouldn’t weren’t supposed to use? That’s one of your temple recommend questions now by the way.
Jennifer Ann Mackley
Have you bathed and has your family bathed recently?
Scott Gordon
Yeah, have you bathed. Has your family bathed? that’s we should put that one back in since COVID. But just in my I admit, I haven’t read it yet. Sorry. But just in my brief perusal of the book, it really looks excellent. And it’s just it seems complete. It seems interesting and well written, and the prose is seeming to be really easy to follow. So, this looks like an excellent, excellent book. And again, you have a great recommendation from the person I asked who is somebody I really trust on her book recommendations.
So, I know you’re immunocompromised a bit. Are you willing to sign a few books if they wear masks where they come close to you? Right? So, we have we have the table right outside the door. Just on my brief look at this book. I would really recommend it. I mean, just I would this is a book. Had I picked it up before I would have purchased it because it looks really good.
And tomorrow morning at nine o’clock we will meet again. And I don’t think we have any other announcements. I hope you have a wonderful evening and I’ll see you tonight or tomorrow. Thank you so much.
