Maxwell Institute Podcast #152: Andrew Jenson and Latter-day Saint History, with Reid L. Neilson and Scott D. Marianno

Welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast. I'm Joseph Stuart. Andrew Jenson undertook a lifelong quest to render the LDS historical record complete and comprehensive. An Assistant Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jenson tirelessly carried out his office's archival mission and advocated for fixed record keeping to become a duty for Latter-day Saints. Reid L. Neilson and Scott D. Marianno offer a new in depth study of Jenson's long life and career in Restless Pilgrim: Andrew Jenson's Quest for Latter-day Saint history from the University of Illinois Press. Their account follows Jenson from his arrival as a Danish immigrant to 1860s Utah through trips around the world to secure documents from far missions and on to his public life as a newspaper columnist and interpreter of Latter-day Saint History. Throughout Jenson and merchants is a figure dedicated to the belief that recorded history united past and present Latter-day Saints in heaven and on earth, and for all eternity. In this interview, you'll hear the voices of Dr. Reid L. Neilson and Scott D. Marianno. In April 2022, Dr. Neilsen was appointed as the assistant Academic Vice President for religious scholarly publications at BYU. He holds a PhD in religious studies with an emphasis in American religious history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned his bachelor's degree in International Relations from BYU and holds graduate degrees in American history and business administration, also from BYU. Scott D. Marianno is a historian and archivist of the Church History Library in Salt Lake City and holds degrees in history from Brigham Young University and Utah State University. Now without any further ado, let's get to our conversation with Reid and Scott.

Joseph Stuart: Welcome Reid Nielson, and Scott Marianno to the Maxwell Institute Podcast.

Reid Neilson: Thanks for having us today.

Scott Marianno: Good to be with you.

Joseph Stuart: My first question is, how did the two of you come to work on Andrew Jenson, who was an Assistant Church Historian, and really one of the great chroniclers of Latter-day Saint history?

Reid Neilson: I'd been working on Andrew Jenson's life for some time, publishing different articles and, and books on his life. And then I came in contact with Scott Marianno, who I immediately recognized was a very talented historian. And we began partnering together and I began to really appreciate his insights, his ability to write, to narrate his story. And I think it just grew from there. I was most impressed with him as he graduated from Utah State University. And I've been blessed by his association ever since.

Scott Marianno: We laid out the biography, at least our initial take on the biography at a Chipotle in Bountiful, which is where good ideas happen. And from there, Andrew Jenson became this dream biographical subject. His corpus of papers are at the church history library, he was a daily journal keeper, massive amounts of correspondence. And it became overwhelming in a sense initially, as we look at the scope of his life, to decide what do we talk about, and what don't we talk about? But the most intriguing aspect of him, I think, is that he transcends some of the trends in Mormon biography, in that he is a lay person of sorts, he never is called as a General Authority. So, he sits just below that level of church administration, he interacts frequently with them, but he never gets called as a General Authority. So we get that perspective of a faithful Latter-day Saint who is operating within church administration, but does not have the ecclesiastical power to make significant change in that sense.

Joseph Stuart: Something else I was struck by, just in looking at the cover is that two historians were working together when often historians will solo-author a project. What were the advantages that came from co publishing this biography together?

Scott Marianno: Reid is a dream to work with. He is intensely organized. So we stayed on deadline. So that there's an advantage there, in that we could keep each other on task and working towards an end goal of publishing. But on top of that, we found it somewhat easy, I think, to blend our historical voices. But we did come from two different historical perspectives, two different individuals with different research interests. And that could fill out the scope of this biography. So that these two perspectives are brought to bear on the life of Andrew Johnson. Reid obviously had far more experience in the life of Andrew Jenson than I did, I had to catch up quickly in the sources to match Reid’s knowledge. But then we could blossom from there, in that we could check each other's historical interpretation. I could ask Reid, “Am I reading this right? Am I seeing the sources correctly?” We could push back on our historical interpretations, so that by the time we get a finished product, it reflects the best of our work. And so it was great to instantly have that peer review process in ways that you don't get if you're writing solo.

Reid Neilson: Something that was really beneficial for me working with Scott is that he had the time to really delve deeply into the primary sources. During this entire time, I was managing the Church History department and serving as Assistant Church Historian, Andrew Jenson’s counterpart decades later, but my time was assumed with lots of meetings, administrative paths, and things like that. And so Scott was able to really take the laboring or in terms of, you know, reading through his correspondence, reading through his diaries. One great blessing that we both had is that Andrew Johnson's diaries had been digitized. And so we both from wherever we were working, could look at his journals and open them together on our computers and do primary source research digitally, which was an incredible blessing through the collaborative process. But I like what Scott said, I think we both brought our own experiences and interests to bear on the project. I think the biography’s a lot better, having been co authored than if one of us had just done it by ourselves. So, I thank Scott for that.

Joseph Stuart: Now a few big picture items before we go into the life of Andrew Jenson as an individual. You begin in the book, which is entitled Restless Pilgrim: Andrew Jenson's Quest for Latter-day Saint History by noting that Jenson lived through a remarkable period of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which historians often call the Americanization process. What do historians mean by that term?

Scott Marianno: So admittedly, it's somewhat of a simplified framework that helps us grapple with a period of intense evolution for the church, generally agreed to start in 1890, with the issuance of the manifesto, although some historians would suggest that… that a period of Americanization occurs even earlier with the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, greater connection to eastern markets. So, Latter-day Saints enter the Great Basin in 1847, thinking that they have some time to build out isolated kingdom of sorts, and to build design and how they'd hope and they quickly realized with contact in the east that that's not going to be so easy. And then as polygamy prosecutions ramp up, manifestos issued in 1890, there's this period of change that occurs into the 20th century. So when we speak of Americanization, we're talking about Latter-day Saint engagement with the larger American populace. And that transformation that they undergo into the early 20th century, where they're seen largely as American. That was a negotiation that they had to engage with. There was changes to their economic ideals. There were changes in immigration, there was changes to church administration. So Latter-day Saint historians have been engaging with this critical juncture in the early 20th century for years. Armand Moss talks about it. Kathleen Flake talks about it. Tom Alexander talks about it, and we add our own perspective on it through the lens of Jenson's life. Jenson meets Brigham Young, and he interacts with Heber J. Grant. And he's there through those entire administration changes, documenting the history of the church. So he has a remarkable perspective on the changes that occurred. From the time he was a young budding historian with Brigham Young, to the time he's interacting with the administration of Heber J. Grant.

Reid Neilson: I mean, that's well said, Scott. What I loved about it is Andrew Jenson, obviously, is emblematic of Americanization himself, or we may touch on that a little bit later through his own immigration from Denmark in the 1850s. And then, even his death as an American, early 1940s. And what I loved about this story is often we talk about what's happening to the corporate church, what's happening to the Latter-day Saints as a people or as their own ethnicity is being made talks about, but something that's fascinates me about Andrew Jenson's life is we see what's happening to his household, his person, we get to see what's happening to his families. He did live in plural marriage and you see what happens to those families and the stresses with Americanization. You see the blessings that come through that so-called Americanization as Andrew Johnson and others are able to participate more fully in an American social life and be part of the fabric of a nation that they've come to love. And so it's… his life is a great microcosm of big changes that are happening throughout the intermountain west, the great basin kingdom of Brigham Young's day. You see those same transformations happen to him personally, and it's fascinating.

Scott Marianno: In the 1880s, Andrew Jenson is using his publication, The Historical Record, to defend the church and to write about church history. As polygamy prosecutions are happening as Latter-day Saints polygamists are going underground. And so he's engaging with that defense of the church. Later in his life there's this moment where he is asked to attend all the historical commemorations that are occurring along the Mormon trail and monument building to honor westward migration. And so he finds himself enveloped in this westward Manifest Destiny narrative that's gripping the nation in the 1920s and 1930s. And so he goes from Danish immigrant in his career, to nation builder, settler of the West, honored pioneer at these commemorations. His career had really come full circle and he is recognized personally as a full blown American citizen.

Joseph Stuart: I'm also struck by the idea that Jenson begins to train and practice as a historian as the modern research university is coming into effect in the United States, and that different visions or different ways of doing history are coming into practice. You note that he doesn't do scientific history in the ways that we may think about today, but how did ideas about history and ideas about documenting and writing history change during his career?

Scott Marianno: Andrew Jenson's career starts around the time that Latter-day Saint writers like Parley P. Pratt, Orson F. Whitney a little bit later, George Q. Cannon is publishing. He is learning a writing style that is very florid and romantic, but also, English is his second language. And so, he is learning quickly how to be a historian, to produce historical product, and he's basing it off of a lot of these other English based historians that he is reading. At the time, objective history is just coming into vogue. The American Historical Association is founded in 1884. There are starting to be professional historians. But Jenson never fancied himself as a historian. He walked that line between antebellum-antiquarian impulse to gather and collect history. And then the new age let's produce objective fact-based, source-based histories. So he's really bridging the gap between those two American impulses to produce history. But later on, he gets, he gets passed up. He is a public historian. He's engaging in public lectures, he's producing historical product for Latter-day Saints. It's really grounded in local history, the development of ecclesiastical structures within wards and stakes, he's recording all of those facts and putting these histories out. They weren't very compelling to the average Latter-day Saint. So, he is president of the Utah State Historical Society until 1917. And he comments on this in his journal, he says he was pushed out by a clique of academics. So he feels like professional history is sort of overwhelming him at that point, that he has become past his prime. And of course, who takes over for the Utah State Historical Society in 1917 is John A. Widtsoe, later Apostle, so he is very sensitive to the fact that he feels like he's producing this grand narrative of Latter-day Saints history. But Latter-day Saints aren't necessarily digesting it in the way that he had hoped.

Reid Neilson: Something I find fascinating about Jenson's record keeping and kind of larger trends, is he's got a very interesting relationship with Joseph Fielding Smith, who of course, is the son of a prophet Joseph F. Smith, and becomes Assistant Church Historian himself and later Church Historian. And for decades, Andrew Jenson is collecting all these records. As Scott just mentioned, I can't think of anyone in our history that loved finding a document as much as Andrew Jenson. He was an absolute document hound, loved every fact and figure. I was just using his biographical encyclopedia, the four volume set yesterday on a project and was just stunned at the resources that came together to create those volumes that had he not done that we wouldn't have today. And that can be said of his encyclopedic history of the church. It can be said of all the other different documentary histories and encyclopedia dictionary type works that he did, church chronology, etc. But going back to Joseph Fielding Smith, Andrew Jenson was really good at collecting documents. And he wrote some narrative histories like the History of the Scandinavian mission and some others. But I don't think he fully appreciated the utility of a one volume history and appreciated getting it out into the hearts and minds of the general membership of the church. He felt and expected members of the Church, as he canvassed the different stakes and units, to purchase his histories. But I'm not sure how much people actually consumed his histories. And then along comes Joseph Fielding Smith and writes Essentials in Church History, that really becomes the standard for the church's kind of historical knowledge and awareness for decades. Well, up through the early 1970s. That was the gold standard in the minds of many church members. And I think that was frustrated Andrew Jenson because he, I think, appreciated that that wasn't what he was interested in. And maybe he didn't have those same strengths or capabilities. I think he was more interested in the archive versus translating that for the masses. So he was both part of and apart from other trends that were swirling around him, both in and out of the church.

Joseph Stuart: And this is just fascinating on a number of levels because the three of us are trained as historians and in religious studies, and thinking about the way that you, that any of the three of us might react to seeing a primary source is very different from how our friends and family who aren't trained in the same way may not encounter that same source. So in some ways, it's almost reassuring that the more things change, the more things stay the same as well.

Scott Marianno: Church historian Anton H. Lenn has this great comment in general conference in 1917, I believe, where he is promoting Andrew Jenson's work because Andrew Jenson feels a little slighted, he feels like Latter-day Saints aren't taking record keeping seriously and they're not they're certainly not reading his church chronology or his LDS biographical encyclopedias. And so Anton H. Lenn goes on to promote Andrew Jenson's work from the pulpit, and he calls Jenson a placer miner, really getting at Jenson's approach to historical production. He's going to dive into the historical sources, compile a manuscript, a journal history of the church, from these sources, and Jenson cared more about the volume of that historical product. He essentially says Jenson is so excited, like a placer miner discovering gold whenever he discovers a new historical fact. And I think that really gets at Jenson's attitude towards the historical record.

Joseph Stuart: Well, and that seems to align with what the Church History Department is doing today, both in it's creating narratives through the Saints project and the four volumes of Saints, but also in the Joseph Smith papers project where such care is taken to document individual sources so that other historians can go and do interpretive work. Would you say that's fair?

Reid Neilson: I think it is fair. Right now, I think the Church History Department, where I worked previously, and Scott currently works, has found a good balance between the narrative and the documentary history. And they're hitting multiple audiences. And I think that's a very strategic move that they've been engaged in now for some time, and they've been very successful at it. I think Jenson would applaud both approaches. And I think he'd just be thrilled at what's happening in the church archive. But interestingly enough, I think many of our historians on some of the questions with the Joseph Smith Papers in terms of Joseph Smith's marital relations, and other questions, they're going back to Jenson's record. And in Saints, they're using records, as Scott mentioned, that he gathered in some of his worldwide trips. That had Jenson not been doing that placer mining that Scott has referred to, we couldn't have the histories that we have today. So I think you see both approaches in both what is happening in the church currently, and I think what was happening in the Historian's Office, but not always with Jenson's own participation.

Joseph Stuart: In thinking about all these different trends, I think it's important to remember that he was an immigrant to the United States from Denmark. How does Jenson's immigrant identity shape his life and how he thinks about himself?

Reid Neilson: I think that Denmark always plays a role in his thinking, in the way that he views the world and his own self-identity. We talked earlier about Americanization, how he was part of those trends and saw himself as an American, and really wanted to be part of that American story. I think that he's part of that grand narrative of people who immigrate to America with nothing, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make something of themselves. I think he certainly saw himself in that mode. One of the times that I think that's most fascinating for Andrew Jenson, as far as his Danish identity, which is always part of his life, was when he served as a mission president. He served several times, several missions in Denmark. And this is some of the great work that Scott did in getting into some of the correspondence and the legal challenges that Jenson faced on his final mission presidency, when in Jenson's mind, he had done great, great work and he had, in defending the church, but it got a bit polemical, with one individual, in particular, a local Danish clergyman, and an anti-Mormon. And at some point, it looked like Andrew Johnson was not going to be able to return to Denmark because of some outstanding litigation. And I think that broke his heart. This idea that he had been rejected by his own nation, that he had come back to help redeem as a missionary. And then a few years later, there's this great story that one of the concluding stories of our book, when Andrew Jenson is sent on behalf of the church in the state of Utah, to represent the best of Danish immigration to America, and is there to help do a dedication of a national park there with a wagon from Utah and what have you, but he writes in his historical record of what it was like to be beloved by his Danish people again, and to be accepted at the highest levels of Danish society as a representation of the Latter-day Saint immigration to America. And I just think of those two experiences of feeling completely rejected, and quite, literally almost banned from the nation, to then being embraced and lauded for what he represented. And so that's something we try and tell throughout the entire story is his identity as both a Dane which never goes away, and he has many interactions with the Danish community in Utah, in America, and then, of course, the Danish community back in Denmark itself as an ecclesiastical leader and missionary, but also how he loved America and the opportunity that that land created for him to flourish both as a religionist, as a Latter-day Saint, but also as a historian.

Scott Marianno: Immigration, there was trauma associated with immigration for Latter-day Saints in the 19th century, and it wasn't trauma caused by the church. But there was this identity renegotiation that happened particularly for Danes in Denmark. The Danish Lutheran Church was supreme in Denmark and it was tied to national identity. So when the Jenson family converted in the 1850s, they were essentially leaving behind that national identity. Julie Allen gets to this in her great book Danish, But Not Lutheran. So the Jenson family completely underwent that renegotiation. They immigrate to Utah territory in 1866. And Jenson is a wanderer in the American West, for a couple of years after his identity. The Scandinavian Shurn in the newspaper in Scandinavia for Latter-day Saints had wonderful depictions of what Zion would be like for immigrants. Well, Jenson did not find that those depictions were completely accurate for him. And so he goes around doing a number of wage labor jobs for years upon his arrival. In addition, his parents end up divorced. So they're divided between two Scandinavian communities, one in Pleasant Grove, and another in Sanpete County. And so his family's divided at this point, he's got no job or very little prospects for employment. And he's wondering, what did I do all of this for? Why did I come away from my home country? But he ends up going on a mission, and he returns and he starts his literary endeavors. And that's where he finds his calling. He feels a higher purpose, to really embrace his faith fully, live it out and then defend it. It emboldens Jenson. And so when we see him traveling around the West, pushing his publications, defending the church at every turn, and all of his writing, it's informed by this early moment where he felt a degree of distance from the faith that he converted to, and he has to renegotiate his identity. And once he does that, there's no looking back for him. But I think he is emblematic of a negotiation that many Latter-day Saint immigrants had to go through as they leave their home country and enter this Zion in the west.

Reid Nielson: One of the things that I'd mentioned. Again, just thinking back on special moments in the writing of this biography with Scott, Scott was able to find the archives of the Church History Library, one audio recording, I think it's the only audio recording we have of Andrew Jenson, of course. He gave literally 100s, if not 1000s of public addresses during his lifetime. So he was speaking all the time, but we only have in our archive, one audio sample from him. And it's towards the very end of his life at a birthday party where he's gathered his children and grandchildren, dear friends, and you hear his Danish accent. And for me, it was really, really sweet because I read everything, it’s just English. You know, there's no accent in the written English. But when I finally heard his voice for the first and only time I thought, you're someone who never escaped, and probably never wanted to, his Danish roots, and what a sweet homeland Denmark was for him.

Joseph Stuart: Well, wonderful! And as you mentioned, Scott, Jenson begins as a day laborer. He serves as a missionary and comes back and really starts to hit his stride attending to intellectual pursuits and to historical pursuits. So how did he come to work at the church Historian's Office, and what were those first few years like?

Scott Marianno: It's a long road for Jenson to the Historian's Office, and I think it's much longer than he had originally hoped. He gets his start publishing a Danish translation of Joseph Smith history, which he gets the approval from Brigham Young and Apostle Erasmus Snow. That's tough work because he's essentially pushing that publication on his own. He's using a certain subscriber based model that was used for other Latter-day Saint publications- I think Parley P. Pratt’s autobiography was sold in this way. And he gets a lot of pledge subscribers but as you know, the Danish community is not, and no Latter-day Saint at this point is really flush with cash to purchase literary endeavors like Andrew Jenson is doing. And so he struggles, he goes into a massive printing debt with the Deseret News, and that continues as he moves from publication to publication. He is eventually told to broaden his audience beyond the Danish community, although because of his immigrant identity, he felt himself a bit of an ambassador to the Scandinavian community. And he continues that role throughout his life. But he starts to publish the historical record, which is a history-based publication based off of other things that he's publishing. So he's doing some original historical work. He's also publishing some reminiscences and recollective accounts of Latter-day Saints in that publication. And he's looking for subscribers that way. He actually invites the church, and this is a theme throughout his life, to take on the historical record as an official publication of the Historian's Office. And they say, essentially, thanks, but no thanks. That's your individual endeavor. With that came repeated requests because of the haphazard nature of the finances related to this publishing out, that he repeatedly asked to enter the Historian's Office as a historian and he's rebuffed numerous times. But he wants that consistent income. At some point, the labor of the Historian's Office becomes such that they require a man like Jenson. He helps with gathering sources for Heber Bancroft's history of Utah. He's putting the request of the Historian's Office, he eventually is asked to travel to the historic sites of the restoration, to document them and also to write in the Deseret News about them. And it's kind of a critical moment in 1888, when Latter-day Saints need something positive in their newspapers about their identity. And he puts out a narrative that returns to the sights of persecution for Latter-day Saints and, and rallies the troops in a way with his narratives. And so he's displaying this penchant for historical interpretation and showing some value in his travels. And it's these kinds of moments where the leadership and historians office of Apostle Franklin D. Richards becomes Church Historian, and they start to consider, hey, maybe this Jenson guy could be a value to our enterprise. But it's not till the 1890s, post manifesto, where the records of the church are in complete disarray. The financial records need work, the membership records need work, they had been scattered from the Historian's Office essentially, and put into private hands as the polygamy raids were occurring. And someone had to put those records in order. There was hesitation on the part of the administration to take Jenson in, but it was at this moment where they said essentially, we need a man who can travel. And we didn't need a man who can gather in records and do the spade work to put our historical house in order. And that's really the impetus for Jenson's attachment to the Historian's Office. First, he becomes in what they call an “attache" in the language and he gets a salary of $100 a month. But then he's set apart eventually, as a full blown “historian in Zion” is what they call him. And he travels to the wards, stakes, missions of the church and starts doing that work of putting the records in order.

Reid Neilson: It was one of my favorite parts of the story. He is so tenacious in his desire to formally align himself with the church and the historical enterprise there. There's this moment early on when he's doing this wage labor, and he's absolutely miserable. And he writes in his journals, in his autobiography about wanting so desperately to fulfill this higher sense of purpose and calling that he felt that he had. Later in life, in fact, he alluded to the Book of Abraham, when he talks about these noble and great ones and said, I believe that there were noble great ones called in premortal life, to lead the restoration and lead the different gospel dispensations. And he said, but I also believe that there were those that were called to document their efforts and those dispensations, and he says, I'm one of them. And so he has a sense of calling, but he doesn't have a sense of opportunity. And it's such a tender story to watch him just continually try everything he possibly can, work every relationship that he has, every skill and ability that he's been given, develop new avenues for publications, start and try it very entrepreneurially, these different journals and newspapers and just anything that he can do to make a living, to fulfill the sense of mission. There's this great moment where finally, as Scott just alluded to, he’s set apart as a historian in Zion, it's almost like, we hope the readers feel almost the sense of jubilation with him. It meant everything to him, that he finally could marry his vocation with his avocation. And from that moment forward, he gave literally everything to formal church record keeping.

Joseph Stuart: Wonderful! So Jenson, he finally gets to the church Historian's Office and he's eventually asked to serve as Assistant Church Historian. And Reid since you've also served in that role, what does that mean that Jenson was responsible for on a day to day level and how has that changed over time? Meaning how was your experience different than Jenson's was?

Reid Neilson: I think for Jenson, being an Assistant Church Historian, it meant permanency and a sustained paycheck. And I think he looked at the previous cast of characters in the Historian's Office, beginning with Apostle Wilford Woodruff, he was the first Assistant Church Historian said apart when George J. Smith, who was Church Historian, had to go east to take care of some church business with the government. And so I think for Jenson, that title brought with it both permanent pay, but also legitimacy. And since Andrew Jenson's time, some of the finest historians of the church have been called as Assistant Church Historians. They're my heroes. You have B. H. Roberts, Junius Wells, Andrew Jenson himself, and many others. More recently, you have Jim Allen, Davis, Benton, these are luminaries in the field. And I've always looked up to these men. I wish we had some women Assistant Church Historians. I remember when I got called as Assistant Church Historian, it was an appointment from the First Presidency and quorum of the 12, and it was Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and Elder Quentin Cook that extended that role to me. And it was an incredibly poignant moment in my both personal and professional life. And Elder Holland, he said something kind of funny, as he often does, he has such a great wit. He said, “Reid here at the church we’re really good at giving away titles, but not more money. He said, we're kind of like a large bank.” And so he said, “This is a great title for you. But it doesn't come with a salary increase.” And we all laugh, then I remember driving home and my wife asked me about that, thinking what I thought about that. And my response to her at the time was I need to be classed among these men that are my heroes, that's cosmic payment enough. And so I resonated with Andrew Jenson's sense of what that title means. I think it's a very sacred responsibility. And it was a marvelous many years that I was able to fill that responsibility working with the Church History Department. Now Assistant Church Historian then meant something probably very different in terms of actual logistics and responsibilities. Andrew Jenson, was an Assistant Church Historian where there were a handful of staff members, a very decrepit, old Historian's Office building with minimal archival best practices in place.

Joseph Stuart: I think that the average Latter-day Saint would be blown away looking at the beautiful Church History Library we have now and thinking about the resources and infrastructure that Jenson was working with at the time.

Reid Neilson: Exactly right. I used to walk into the Church History Department. And that beautiful facility, I think it's the greatest archival facility in the intermountain west. It's spectacular! And when I was there, I was responsible for managing about 250 employees and several hundred missionaries. It's a global operation now, whereas Jenson's responsibilities were much more circumscribed. It was much smaller. But I think the sense of mission still permeates the role of the historian or Assistant Church Historian, or any of the members of the historians staff, that you're trying to keep that record that was alluded to in D&C 21. For special reasons, I think sometimes, I think we appreciate them as historians, what those reasons might be. And in other ways, perhaps we don't even anticipate how these records might bless the church in the decades and centuries to come.

Joseph Stuart: Historian Ardis Parshall recently sent a letter to me that had been written about my great grandfather. His house had burned down and his ward petitioned for the church to help them to rebuild his home. And so that little scrap of paper ended up meaning a whole lot more. And I think this is something that Jenson saw, and that most historians see, is that one document doesn't just tell us a single aspect of the story, but can illuminate a person, and what that person meant to their community as well. I'm thinking after you all have written this biography, what are some of the key takeaways about the place of history and the historian's craft for Latter-day Saints that you all have reflected on?

Scott Marianno: I developed an intense appreciation for the role historical consciousness plays, and its relationship to Latter-day Saint identity. The restoration occurs, in a particular geographic setting, at a particular time, within geopolitical boundaries. All of that context is brought to bear our understanding of what that restoration is and what it means. The Doctrine and Covenants, all of those revelations, compiled from Joseph Smith's life are based on or generated from historical events that Joseph is thinking about, he's pondering about, he’s praying about. And so history and our understanding of history is inseparable from the events of Joseph’s day and from the revelations that grow out of it. So, Latter-day Saints are urged to understand that history and to embrace that history because it's so critical to their understanding of their religion and of their doctrine and of their theology. Those two points are inseparable. And then I too, I think of Jacob 4 where, in the Book of Mormon, we're told that the spirits speak of the truth and lieth not wherefore it's speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be. The historical pursuit for Jenson was to understand things as they really are. And to make sure that that historical memory never eroded so that Latter-day Saints could pick up that history and understand things as they really are. But the other part of that too, is that we can, from that historical consciousness, then understand where we're going, and things as they really will be. As Dieter F. Uchtdorf has said recently, the restoration is ongoing, there will be a continuous evolution as the restoration continues. And so if we want to see where we might be heading as a church, we really need that historical consciousness of where we were. And Jenson's effort to complete the historical record was after recording on Earth, what would be recorded in heaven. So Latter-day Saints could completely understand their identity.

Reid Neilson: I think a real key takeaway from me about the place of history for the Latter-day Saints kind of was solidified in my mind back in the summer of 2009, I was then working as a professor here at BYU, and I was recruited by Elder Marlin A. Jensen of the 70, who was then the Church Historian Recorder. And he invited me to come up to help manage the Church History Department. And it was a marvelous opportunity in my own life to be thinking of moving from a sole practitioner of history to an institutional voice there. He invited me weeks later to attend the dedication of the Church History Library, which I didn't do. I was doing a program at Columbia that summer, and I just didn't have the time and the means to fly myself out and be gone yet another weekend to attend, which is one of the great regrets of my life. But when I told them I couldn't attend, he said, “Well, are there any quotes or anything that you'd suggest that I, you know, including my dedicatory remarks?” I was flattered that a seventy would be asking me for my opinion. I didn't know if he'd use anything, but I took it very seriously. I said, “Well, let me think about it. I'll get back to you.” And I found a quote by Andrew Jenson, because by that time, I'd already started working on his life. And it's a quote that was very, very meaningful to him. He's citing the Prophet Joseph Smith, in Nauvoo, when apostasy was swirling around the church. And on a couple of occasions, we have in the historical record, we have Joseph Smith making some pretty profound statements. The first is, he says, “you can always know the true church, because the majority of the 12 Apostles will be there.” And that's a quote that most Latter-day Saints have heard or, you know, Joseph, that was saying, “here's a key by which you can, you know, know what to follow.” And I think that was pretty thoughtful, given what happened within a year of that statement, of course, he was martyred and the church fragmented. A statement that he also made in Nauvoo that was reported by Orson Hyde and some others that Andrew Jenson loved to parrot, was he said, “The second key by which you'll know the true church is that the majority of the records will be there.” That's not nearly as well known by members of the church. And I shared that with Elder Jenson, he actually included that quote, in his formal dedicatory remarks there in summer of 2009, at the Church History Library. And I've reflected on that a lot, Joseph Smith’s understanding of record keeping in a way that perhaps we don't fully appreciate. And I remember working on the biography of Jenson and thinking of that quote, and being surrounded by the treasures of the collection there at the Church History Library. And thinking that to Jenson, this wasn't just, oh, I'm really interested in this topic. And I'm going to do some research or I'm gonna gather biographies. I'm going to write about each ward and stake and unit and all these things. It wasn't him going out because he just wanted to see the world and tell the story. It was a way of adding legitimacy, and prophetic and primature to the church into the restoration. I think Jenson wholeheartedly believed that statement by the Prophet Joseph Smith, that he was adding to our repository of truthfulness by gathering records. And I think for me, the moments that I felt a real connection with Andrew Jenson, as a historian, are those times when I really see him doing a sacred work in the vein of Mormon and Moroni, that these ancient prophets, you know, we think of them as prophet historians. I like to think of them as historian prophets sometimes. But they understood why they were gathering records and why they were telling the stories of their dispensation. And I think Andrew Jenson felt at home with these ancient brethren. And I think he felt the fulfillment of his life's call, to be part of that gathering not just for document sake, but for legitimacy of the restoration and a sign that God was with his people and his prophets. And that's, that's incredibly meaningful to me.

Joseph Stuart: Following the commandment given to Joseph Smith and Doctrine and Covenants 88 regarding seeking out the best books, what are three books that each of you would recommend to our audience?

Reid Neilson: Let me share three that I really like. Two are Latter-day Saint related and one is just a personal favorite of mine. Two of my favorite Latter-day Saint history books deal with Utah. The first is by one of my mentors and graduate advisors, the late Ronald Walker. He wrote a book entitled Wayward Saints: the Godbeites and Brigham Young, which traces the story of William Godbi and his associates in the 1870s. And it's, I think, a cautionary tale to appreciate prophetic voice and intellectual endeavors, and the proper place of those two and thank Ron for talking to him. He really saw the story of William Godbi as a tragedy, and, of course, the story of Brigham Young as a triumph and I think there's great lessons to be learned there. Another book is Jared Farmer’s On Zion's mount: Mormons, Indians in the American landscape. I've just started a job here at BYU. And so I pass Mount Timpanogos every day twice, coming and going from Bountiful, where I live. And it's an incredible ethno-history of people and places, and meaning of what the landscape here in Utah Valley meant to so many different groups. And it's beautifully written, I think, it won the parchment prize, and is one of the real treats of Latter-day Saint history. Finally, I'd suggest Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety. It's kind of an autobiographical novel, about two couples who go back and forth between Wisconsin and a summer home in Vermont, and the stories of how we go through life as academics. The trials and the triumphs and, and how our best efforts sometimes yield fruit and other times life takes us in directions, we never would have gone but it's a beautiful story of academics and relationships and life.

Scott Marianno: I'll cheat a little here and suggest as one book, Jenson's encyclopedic history of the Church, which was published in 1941. And I do that simply because I have come to appreciate what an accomplishment that book was, and what it really represents. The fledgling historians office effort required Jenson, mostly out of pocket to travel by steamer, by foot, by rail car. Eventually, he buys his own automobile to travel within the intermountain west, an immense time and effort and sacrifice to his family, to gather minute details on the settlements of the church, and its resulting ecclesiastical units. And then later missions of the church on a worldwide tour. This book published in 1941, the year he dies, is the culmination of all of that effort. And when he's pushing it to the Church Administration to get official support, James E. Talmage gives his official review and says, This is going to be out of date in a few years. It was a great effort by him, but it's going to be out of date eventually, because it's impossible to keep up with the changes of the church at this time. Well, years later, years later, now even, genealogists, historians, myself, we find ourselves wandering over to the shelf in a library and pulling Jenson's encyclopedic history of the church, just so we can see this snapshot of time history on the church's development in this era. So I would say that's book one for me. Another book that I think influenced directly the production of this biography is Grant Whacker’s, America's Pastor, Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation, which he published in 2014, with Harvard. And I say that not because Billy Graham and Andrew Jenson share any similarities really, but because Grant Whacker's way of thinking about biography, the historical empathy in which he approaches his biographical subjects, and he's discussed this elsewhere. And then the themes of his chapters, he essentially looks at the many identities of Billy Graham and discusses them chapter to chapter that directly informed the structure of how we approached Andrew Jenson. And so I just think it's a perfect example of religious biography. And anyone interested in religious biography should pass through that book. And then my last suggestion is one that's a little more personal to me, I was advised in my graduate school by Philip Barlow, who is still at the Maxwell Institute here. His book A Thoughtful Faith: Essays on Unbelief by Mormon Scholars is one that I've approached a number of times on the issue of grappling with intellectual life, and then religious life, and how you square those two impulses. And for me, that book suggests that the life of an intellectual is not countered to religious life. Those two worlds can work in tandem and be very enriching. And I know that the Maxwell Institute, its mantra is about disciple-scholarship. So I found that book immensely enriching for me as I question and interrogate my faith, but then come out more enriched on the other side.

Joseph Stuart: Reid Neilson, Scott Marianno, thank you for stopping by the Maxwell Institute Podcast.

Reid Neilson: Thank you, Joey.

Scott Marianno: Thank you.

Joseph Stuart: And listeners, please stick around. We have audio from Andrew Jenson that we would love you to hear. Have a blessed week.

Hi friends, just wanted to let you know that this clip has been secured from the LDS Church History Library. Thanks to those who helped to make it available. It's an address from Elder Jenson to his family, especially his children and grandchildren. So, when you hear him address family members, that's why it's not to the church. It was also recorded when he was 90 years old and quite late in his life, the audio quality suffers a little bit. So please be patient and enjoy this beautiful testimony from a great Latter-day Saint, Andrew Jenson.

Andrew Jenson Audio: I haven't ever shared God and keep His commandments, and show my prosperity by extension as well as by precept the road that leads to happiness in this life and salvation and exultation in the life to come. I have implicit faith in my Redeemer Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and in divine mission to the Prophet Joseph Smith, in all my ups and downs in life, I have stood unshaken on these points. Now children, grandchildren and my posterity that I leave in mortality, and those yet unborn but to follow. When you cherish in your memory, that Danish boy who left his native land for the gospel state, immigrated in desire to become direct, and remain, to become and remain a true Latter-day Saint and devoted Christian and a loyal citizen to the best nation on Earth. Borrowing this sentiment from one of our own voice, I appeal to you, with my heart full of gratitude, full of affection, and eyes filled with tears and say, will you be true to the faith that your parents have cherished? Will you be true to the faith for which martyrs have perished? May God bless you, help you and enable you to do even better and greater work which I and my wives have done. And with this book and mine is the servant of God, bearing the holy priesthood. Bless you with a father's blessing in the name of Jesus Christ, my Redeemer. Amen.

Stuart: Thank you for listening to the Maxwell Institute podcast. Did you please rate review and subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to this podcast and recommend it to others so that we can fulfill the Maxwell Institute's mission to Inspire and fortify Latter-day Saints and their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and engage the world of religious ideas. Thank you and have a great week.