E36: The Curious Case of William Clayton’s Diaries

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:04)
And having learned where the William Clayton diaries were, what steps, if any, did you make to look at them?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:11)
The 5th of January, 1979, I approached Donald T. Schmidt.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:16)
Who was he?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:17)
The church archivist, and I informed him of my interest in the William Clayton Journal.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:22)
Did you have any material with you at the time?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:25)
Yes.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:26)
What was that?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:27)
I had extracts, purported extracts, from the William Clayton Nauvoo journals that I showed him that I had found.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:33)
Where had you found those?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:34)
In the LDS church archives and other places.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:37)
And having shown those to him, did you have a discussion with Don Schmidt about the journal itself?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:43)
Yes.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:43)
And what was the nature of this conversation?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:46)
Simply that I had always been interested in it. He volunteered to make the information that the church would in a few days, or the church historical department, would be acquiring access to those diaries.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:54)
And did you ask if you could see them?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:56)
Yes.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:56)
And what was his response?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:58)
Yes.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:58)
And did you in fact see the diaries?

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:02)
Shortly thereafter, I did get to see the diaries.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:14)
Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:15)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:17)
Bringing you the story of Mormonism from the shadow of the Everlasting Hills, straight out of Zion. This isn't your grandpa's Mormon history.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:44)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners from our roots until present day.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:50)
Gird your loins, lock your hearts, and pay your tithing, because we're bringing you the story of Mormonism in all its paradisiacal glory.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:58)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:24)
If you love Mormon history, this is a pretty incredible time to be alive. Over the last two decades, a truly, truly remarkable amount of sources have been made available. It's really exciting, either published or digitized, sometimes both if we're really lucky.
However, one key piece of the puzzle has not been available for research, and that is William Clayton's Nauvoo Diaries, at least for 99.98% of the general population. And that, my friends, is where our little story begins. We tell you every episode does saddle up, and this time we really mean it. You have special dispensation from the first presidency, the Mormon underground, cross-campus swearing matches, lawsuits, depositions, appeals, and me, Bryan too. We got tired of just telling you about the history. We decided to insert ourselves into the story just a little bit.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:22)
Honestly, it's a little tough to decide where we're going to start today. Best bet is probably to back up a little bit, and we got to situate William Clayton first. So Clayton is born in England in 1814 Then in 1837, he's one of this first generation of converts to Mormonism in England. This is, you know, Kimball, Heber C. Kimball, and those Wilford Woodruff, those guys go over and baptize tons and tons of folks.
So by late 1840, he arrives in Nauvoo, and before long, he finds himself in the inner circles of Mormon power. We've talked about this before. It's worth mentioning again, Joseph Smith was very prone to creating BFFs quickly. Sometimes, it doesn't work out so great, John C. Bennett, Babes in Toyland.
In this case, he bets right. William Clayton was as devoted a confidant as you could ask for, and he was a confidant.
For some reason, Clayton felt like writing in greater detail about the behind-the-scenes chaos of Nauvoo than anyone around him, and I mean anyone. The reason that Clayton and his famous diaries have been so famous is that they are killer. If you haven't figured out yet that strange things were afoot at the Nauvoo, we have sucked at our job. Things was wild there, friends. Clayton was at the center of it, and his quill was scratching.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:34)
I've sat at his organ, his piano organ.
That's right. Not the Victorian's.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:39)
Yes, at the Wood Museum.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:41)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I played his hymn on his pump organ. I shouldn't have been able to do that, but I did.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:48)
We heard that his diaries are actually kept in the bellows, but we didn't try to open it up.