Discovering a Piece of Church History After a 20-Year Search
The detective work behind President Dallin H. Oaks’ book about the trial of the accused assassins of Joseph Smith happened back in the 1960s.
But there’s a rest-of-the-story tale to share.
In 2020, President Oaks spoke about his thrill in discovering crucial documents. For example, he found an index in a county courthouse in Illinois with the name of the first defendant in the trial about Joseph Smith’s murder. That led him to a drawer with a large packet of papers labeled “People v. Levi Williams.”
“It was wrapped with a paper band sealed with paste and apparently never opened,” President Oaks said at a church history symposium. “I still remember vividly the experience of slitting that paper band with my thumb and having about 50 documents spill out on the table before me. The first thing I saw was the signature of John Taylor on a complaint against nine individuals for murdering Joseph Smith.”
There was much, much more.
In the half century since then, church historians rounding up all documents related to Joseph Smith couldn’t find again some of the documents President Oaks had included in his personal notes as he researched his book, “Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith.”
A church historian named Sharalyn Howcroft had learned the documents existed from reading President Oaks’ research notes in BYU’s archives, but she had been unable to find the original for use in the Joseph Smith Papers Project. She and others had conducted an exhaustive search in courthouses and government offices.
Finally, earlier this fall, she found the documents on yet another research trip to Illinois. She was overwhelmed.
“It’s hard to convey to people the experience of seeing something that you have been waiting that long to see, or knowing that something exists and you are trying your darndest to find it and you can’t,” she told the Church News. “To have that moment, I would call it kind of a complicated euphoria. I had a mixture of shock, surprise, I started crying and then I started laughing.”
One treasure was an inventory of Joseph Smith’s real estate properties.
Her moment of discovery was captured in images taken by friend and colleague Jeffrey Mahas.
Howcroft, Mahas and other researchers rounded up other Joseph Smith legal records on their trip. I’m sharing this story of discovery with the permission of my friend and colleague Trent Toone in hopes you’ll read his full story of what the researchers found here.
I’m grateful to Trent for his good work and friendship.
As I give thanks this week, I’ll also be thinking of the luminous Ann Madsen, who died recently after turning 90. She is reunited with her husband, Truman Madsen, who I came to know when I took classes from him at BYU. I didn’t know Ann until after she befriended me in large part because of this newsletter.
I was always grateful when she would call or text. She brightened every day I heard from her or saw her. It was a true gift. I went to her funeral on Saturday, and one of her children shared that a friend told them Ann had an eight-octave range with people. What a tremendous description.
She taught Isaiah courses at BYU for 47 years, up until the end of spring. She is listed in the BYU catalogue to teach it next semester. Her insights, her smile and her joyful touch are missed already.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, wherever you are in the United States or elsewhere. I’m thankful for each of you, too.
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