why me wrote:I think that you should read Don Bradley's account of the alger episode. I think that he covers it quite well. He also returned to the LDS church after doing some in-depth research about some of the more controversial aspects of church history. I think that you may find his writings about Alger and Joseph interesting.
I don't get why someone who has left Mormonism and then returns somehow has more weight in their historical writings than other historians. This logic would mean that Mike Quinn should be the darling of all apologists since Mike still believes the Church and Joseph Smith are God's true Church and his prophet, even after he was ex'ed. History is based on evidence, not on peoples lifestyle.
I was on a panel with Newell Bringhurst about the book Don's chapter appears in (Newell is a great historian by the way). Here is what I wrote: (I am transferring this from Word and I know it will format funny, sorry.)
The first chapter is by Joseph Smith Papers Project employee, Don Bradley, who writes about Joseph Smith’s relationship with Fanny Alger, his 18year old house-keeper/guest in Kirtland, Ohio, during the spring of 1836. Bradley assembles evidence, some of it new, to argue that their relationship was a plural marriage or sealing, not an adulterous affair on Smith’s part. Bradley introduces new evidence with the recently released Andrew Jenson file in the CHL. This record is quite late recollections and has to be considered in that light.
But I would like to look at the closest evidence to the time of the affair. Smith and Rigdon had been in Far West in November 1837 and met with the leaders there. Smith and Cowdery met and discussed what had happened between Smith and Alger. Just before Smith left, the two had decided they would no longer talk publically about the incident, but keep it private. When Smith went back to Kirtland, he decided this was not enough, and started claiming that Cowdery admitted he had lied about Smith and Alger. Cowdery’s brothers, Warren and Lyman were in Kirtland and heard Smith say this, so they wrote a letter to Oliver telling him what was happening. Oliver Cowdery then wrote to his brother Warren Cowdery on January 21, 1838 telling him what had transpired in Far West : "You will see from the other page that your own Brother Lyman’s requests concerning the Stated confession made to Mr. Smith, is, if I am to be credited, not so. For what he pretended to have made it, is to me unaccountable. I can assure you and bro. Lyman, that as God is to judge my soul in the world to come, I never confessed, intimated <or admitted> that I ever willfully lied about him. When he was there we had some conversation in which in every instance I did not fail to affirm that which I had said was strictly true. A dirty, nasty, filthy affair (scrape) of his and Fanny Alger's was talked over in which I strictly declared that I had never deviated from the truth on the matters, and as I supposed was admitted by himself."
“At any rate, just before leaving, he wanted to drop every past thing in which had been a difficulty or difference---he called witnesses to the fact, gave me his hand in their presence, and I might have supposed of an honest man, calculated to say nothing of the former matters.”
On the same day, Cowdery wrote to Joseph Smith:
Sir - I learn from Kirtland, by the last letters, that you have publickly said, that when you were here I confessed to you that I had willfully lied about you – this compels me to ask you to correct that statement, and give me an explanation – until which you and myself are two.”
In the Far West Record April 12, 1838, 167: “David W. Patten testifies, that he went to Oliver Cowdery to enquire of him if a certain story was true respecting J. Smith's committing adultery with a certain girl,18 when he turned on his heel and insinuated as though he was guilty; he then went on and gave a history of some circumstances respecting the adultery scrape stating that no doubt it was true. Also said that Joseph told him, he had confessed to Emma”
If we stop here, not allowing Nauvoo theology in and memory to cloud the past events, it seems both Cowdery and Smith considered this nothing more than an affair. If this affair was on the up and up (a marriage), why did Smith not tell Emma and Cowdery that this was a religious ordinance or there was a revelation? Why did others not come out and say that this was a sealing or marriage when the affair was made public, but instead Smith’s followers accused Cowdery of making it all up?