Apologies Accepted

Mormons, in my experience, fall into a variety of types when it comes to knowledge and understanding of our church's history. There are the paid and unpaid clergy and administrators who, regardless of their actual knowledge of the history, invariably paint historical figures in church history as either angels whose righteousness puts them in a close second only to Jesus himself, or as dastardly villains bent on destroying the church and drinking Joseph Smith's blood in a goblet.

Then there are the vast majority of members whose understanding of church history largely follows the version they consume in the lesson manuals and scriptures and scriptural headnotes produced by the paid and unpaid clergy and administrators.

And then there are the "apologists." I count several of them as friends. These are the hardy souls who try to both gain a complete knowledge of the history and reconcile it with their belief that the church is a divinely inspired institution. I wouldn't say that their mindset is characterized by overwhelming cognitive dissonance, but I wouldn't say that they aren't, as a group, totally sane, either.

Most of the time, I smile at their endeavors and commend them for at least making an effort.

I do take issue, though, with the Desert News's recent headline "Church history reliable, FAIR speaker says" following the latest conference of the FAIR* apologists.

Excuse me?

The histories produced by the LDS church are reliable?

I guess I have a different understanding of the definition of the word. Reliable, to me, in my limited training as a scientist and current occupation as a patent attorney/examiner, means capable of withstanding scrutiny, capable of being reasonably reproduced, not subject to external pressures.

Does anyone really believe that the same church that fired its first trained historian in 1982 (yes, it took until the 1970s for the church to actually hire a professional to mind its history), which routinely excommunicates its academic and amateur historians, and which continues to promulgate biographical fictions to describe its historical figures (see the absolute, utter falsehood which describes the church's third Relief Society President, Zina D.H. Young, whose famous polyandry with her first husband (who never "widowed" her) and with, successively, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, is one of the prime reasons why the term "polygamy" is far more accurate than polygny in describing the church's little experiment in "celestial marriage")--does anyone really believe that the church's history is anywhere near reliable?

I'll grant that the church's history is more reliable today than it was, say, when Joseph Fielding Smith was running the show. I am personally acquainted with one of the professional historians who works for the church, and I do not doubt her integrity.

Still, the church has a long way to go before I can agree that its history is anywhere near reliable. A little, recent, experience of mine may illustrate.

Back in the summer and fall of 2007, I began to take an interest in my Hicks ancestors. I began by noticing that my great-great-great grandmother, Caroline Hicks, was born in Nauvoo in 1844, and that one of her older brothers, born in 1839, was named Samuel Moroni Hicks. Intrigued at what were, among all my ancestors, the earliest converts to the Mormon faith, I decided to investigate.

Amateur that I am, I decided to go down to the archives at the Pioneer History Museum, run by the International Society of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. With my mother in tow, we entered the archives, where I just about gave my mother a heart attack by handing her a history which described how her great-great-grandmother, Caroline, three weeks after her thirteenth birthday, was taken as a plural wife by her bishop, who promptly raped her on their wedding night.

From there, we looked up the sealing record in the International Genealogical Index. Then we found Caroline's brother's account of their trek across the plains from Illinois to Utah in the Utah Overland Travel Database.

Again, amateur that I am, I noticed a footnote in the Overland Travel entry for the source: Hicks, George Armstrong, Family Record and History of Geo. A. Hicks, 10-11. Available at the following institutions: Church Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Excited at the prospect of a family history written by my ancestor's older brother (who also helped her escape from her rapist's window), Mom and I trooped into the Church Archives and sat down to look up the call number for the Family Record and History of George Armstrong Hicks.

The result: Nothing.

The catalog in the archives of the church produced nothing matching the description of the source described in the church's own Overland Pioneer Travel database.

Perplexed, I went up to the reference desk and asked about the reference. At first, the gray, squinting guy ran a search and told me they had nothing by that name. Then I pulled out the print-out I had made from the Overland database, showing that the reference was available in the archives. At that point, old squinty-eyes frowned and informed me that I was asking for an item that was not available in the public catalog. "Why," he asked sternly, "Do you need this?"

Fortunately, I had a passably acceptable answer: I'm descended from George Armstrong Hicks' little sister, and I would like the history to learn about my ancestors.

The reference guy (who was looking more and more like an armed guard than an archivist) had me then write up a proposal to see the history, identifying exactly what part of it I wanted (nevermind that I had never actually seen the history) and for what purpose. I dutifully scribbled out something about how I would like all parts of the history pertaining to George Barton Hicks and Caroline Hicks, my ancestors, for genealogical purposes. After I handed the guy the paper, he informed me that it could take two months or more to hear back from them, and that they reserved the right to deny my request at their discretion.

I've done research in the archives of many reliable historical institutions: the Western Reserve Historical Society, the Ohio Historical Society, the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, etc. I've never been told that: 1) they did not have a reference their own organization published as available; 2) they maintained a private catalog that was not publicly accessible; or 3) I would have to wait two months for a request to be processed and that I might not ever be granted permission, depending on the institution's desire to keep certain information from the public domain. I have been told that some materials were extremely old and delicate and that I would either have to handle them with white gloves in a separate area (like an original newspaper published in 1817) or settle for a copy produced by their staff (like a brittle county history published in 1885). But that's entirely different from being told that they might never let me even see a reference of clear historical value, for reasons that smack of historical censorship. I didn't mention that I wanted to learn more about Caroline's experience with polygamy.

Three months later, I got a call from the archives. They had approved my request and would have copies of portions of the history available for me to view in the private viewing room. However, I was not to bring any cameras, computers, or any means whatsoever to reproduce the document, and I would be required to leave the copies in the reading room when I left. The only materials I could bring with me were pencils and paper with which to take notes, which they reserved the right to review before I left.

I arrived with a notebook of blank paper and ten pencils. Entering the reading room, I was handed five pieces of regular paper, on which were copied portions of a typed transcription of George Armstrong Hicks' personal history.

All that security for a copy of a typed transcription of a history, which I was prohibited from copying myself.

Of course, I did learn a few things on those five pages about my family's origins in Ireland, as well as an account of their conversion to Mormonism in Canada and their travels over the plains to Utah. Not surprisingly, and despite my request for information relating to my ancestor Caroline Hicks, the papers the archives provided to me did not contain any reference Caroline's forced polygamous marriage.

Disappointed, I left the archives with my notes. I tried to console myself with the thought that perhaps George Armstrong Hicks just didn't leave a very detailed personal history. On the other hand, since the typed transcription included page numbers, I found myself wondering about what the omitted pages contained and just how much information was missing from the materials the church magnanimously provided me.

After further research, I encountered an article about George Armstrong Hicks written by former assistant church historian Davis Bitton, in the Utah Historical Quarterly: The Peregrinations of George Armstrong Hicks.

Published in 2000, this is the kind of history that FAIR would characterize as "reliable."

Reading through it, however, I must say that the article could only be described as a blatant character assassination. Bitton spares no words in attacking George Armstrong Hicks' history as "biased and self serving," wondering "whether [Hicks] ever reflected on cause-effect relationships in the moral, psychological, and social world," and, in the clearest manifestation of Bitton's historical objectivity, referring to his subject as "a smart-aleck who, with partial information, showed a consistent tendency to grouse and murmur."

Fortunately, Bitton provided a source for much of the information he included in his article: a typed transcription of the Family Record and History of George Armstrong Hicks, prepared and printed by Nina and Kerry Zabriskie.

So, I promptly called the Zabriskies. Turns out they are a wonderfully gracious mother and daughter living out in Magna. After explaining how I was descended from our mutual ancestor, George Barton Hicks, the Zabriskies invited me and my mother over to share genealogy. When we arrived, Nina and Kerry pulled out the full 62 page transcription of George Armstrong Hicks' personal history, and, to my delight, proceeded to copy the history, in its entirety, on the copy machine they kept in their basement.

Turns out George Armstrong's descendants had given the church his history shortly before Bitton wrote up his little article. Neither Nina nor Kerry had read what the church's historian had written about their grandfather (great-great and great-great-great, respectively). I didn't have the heart to tell them.

Turns out George Armstrong's history contained a lot of information about his father and sister that the church archives conveniently withheld from me. Aside from describing how the Hicks family had served as covert repositories for some of Parley P. Pratt's plural wives, the history talks about how zealous church members raided George's family farm and stole his uncle Samuel's livestock after branding him an apostate in Nauvoo, how George Armstrong had to pay ten dollars to obtain a divorce for his sister Caroline to release her from her polygamous marriage, how Joseph Smith personally visited with George Barton Hicks, requesting that George visit with his older brother John, to persuade John to return to the church from which he had previously been excommunicated, or how George Armstrong Hicks lived in southern Utah, personally knew John Lee, and was one of the few Mormons at that time who publicly condemned what came to be known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

The history was sixty-two pages in all, and cost the Zabriskies easily a dollar more to copy and give to me than the church expended in copying the five pages from the same transcription that they loaned to me and later, presumably, destroyed.


Perhaps some things have changed in the church historical department since 2000. After all, President Hinckley commissioned, and the church dutifully built, a separate building to house the archives, complete with a huge soaring, empty, lobby and enormous ceilings in a largely hollow public library. As of July of this year, there is still no entry in the public catalog for the Family Record and History of Geo. A. Hicks.

Might I have been treated differently had I posed as an academic historian from, say, the University of Indiana, when I requested George Hicks' history? Hard to say, I guess, though to my knowledge, no one has yet to publish anything about George Armstrong Hicks to challenge Davis Bitton's seminal work. Who knows, though, maybe some kid with an Obama t-shirt might wander in there someday and request the history in its entirety again.

For that kid's benefit, though, (should he ever manage to dig up this obscure little blog entry) I post here, in its entirety, for public inspection and download at no cost, the Family Record and History of Geo. A. Hicks. Click here.



*FAIR = Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research