DCP strengthens another faith promoting rumour?

[_Chap]

In another place, someone has posted that they heard a rumour that Will Bagley wrote his book after answering an advertisement seeking someone to write about the MMM putting the blame on Brigham Young.

Characteristically, who comes in with a post saying that the rumour came from a 'credible' source and so on .... Daniel Peterson. After his humiliation about Ritner, he would have to be a fool to say this without any basis at all. But maybe not.

Could someone with a direct line to Bagley contact him. please, and ask him what he wants to say (attributably) about this? If there was an advertisement, it would be good to have the text on record, at least in so far as it refers to the issue of putting responsibility on BY.

by the way, if Bagley already thought he had good evidence of BY's complicity, there seems nothing wrong with him taking up the offer in this way. Had he published before on this subject?

[_Blixa]

You can read Will talking about how he came to write the book in a talk he gave here:

http://www.salamandersociety.com/interviews/willbagley/

“...I was actually hired to do this. I spent two years on the bankroll of a California entreprenuer named Frank James Singer...I told Frank Singer that I would deliver him my best work and my professional conclusions as a historian, but that he would not get history made to order, and he might not be happy with what I concluded, but he would get what I considered an absolutely solid professional opinion, and that I would try to publish a book. Frank was going to write a novel, and had already written the screenplay, and he had already written the acceptance speech for the Oscar he was going to get for his movie on Mountain Meadows...After working for Frank for two years...I did have to finance the completion of the book on my own. The book was about half done...”

Will is an editor for the Arthur C. Clarke Co. (which publishes western history) and The Prairie Dog Press.

Here are some of his other books:

Bones in the Well: The Haun's Mill Massacre, 1838; A Documentary History by Beth Shumway Moore and Will Bagley

Scoundrel's Tale: The Samuel Brannan Papers

Frontiersman: Abner Blackburn's Narrative

Pioneer Camp Of The Saints

West From Fort Bridger: The Pioneering of Immigrant Trails Across Utah, 1846-1850 by J. Roderic & Dale L. Morgan (editors) Revised & Updated by Will Bagley & Harold Schindler

Kingdom in the West by Thomas Bullock and Will Bagley

Army of Israel: Mormon Battalion Narratives by David L. Bigler and Will Bagley

[_Doctor Steuss]

The first I head of the "ad" thing was in Sessions' 2003 FAIR talk.

Another reason of course is the publication of Will Bagley's book. Will began work on his book well before the Hinckley initiative on the Meadows. He was employed by a former Mormon in California who, frankly, wanted to pin the Massacre on Brigham Young. He put an ad in the Salt Lake Tribune asking for applicants to write a new history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and in the course of interviewing several who applied (inaudible) except for Br. Bagley. Will was, by his own words to me--this is first hand words--the only one who said that he could and would pin it on Brigham Young. So Will was hired, he quit his job at Evans and went to work full-time writing a new history which was published by the University of Oklahoma Press last year.

I must tell you up front (you can throw tomatoes or whatever you want at me) that I was one of the readers that the University of Oklahoma Press sent a manuscript and I recommended publication because I believed very strongly and still do that Br. Bagley had done intense research and that it was fairly exhaustive. He solved whatever he could see and looked very deeply, plumbed very deeply, to find much information that Juanita Brooks did not have when she published her landmark book in 1950. And so I was impressed with that and recommended that the Oklahoma Press publish the book but I cautioned the Press that it was an anti-Mormon polemic and that I did not agree with Will's conclusions and we'll talk more about that some more here if time allows.


Shinging New Light...

[_Blixa]

That talk has some problems. I just read it this morning when I was making my previous posts. I would say it has some personal remarks that are not of the greatest of accuracy...

[_beastie]

It seems to me that this portion of bagley's talk disproves the rumor, ie, that the ad was specifically for someone who would point the finger at BY:

And I also felt that if I was going to conclude that Brigham Young did this, and make an argument that he did, that I also better have pretty damn good evidence. But that's one thing I did not set out to do, to prove that Brigham Young ordered the Mountain Meadows Massacre. First of all, I didn't think that it was even possible. And I still don't think, no, I'm sure that if I had a signed confession from Brigham Young, validated as being in his handwriting by Dean Jessee and every other Mormon expert on handwriting, witnessed by all twelve of the apostles, nobody would believe it. It wouldn't make any difference. So I recognized that it was foolish to try to build a polemic, to try to prove something. So what I realized was that no one's ever told this story very well.

Doesn't this contradict the rumor? The rumor isn't just that Bagley answered an ad, but the ad specifically wanted someone to finger BY.

[_Blixa]

Well in the Gene Sessions FAIR speech linked to above by Steuss, Sessions claims that Bagely told him personally that he got the job because he was the only person the guy interviewed that said they would pin the blame on Young.

I sort of doubt Will said any such thing to Gene. But I don't want to say more lest I restart that irksome "liar lawsuit" meme that was tearing through here last week.

[_beastie]

Well in the Gene Sessions FAIR speech linked to above by Steuss, Sessions claims that Bagely told him personally that he got the job because he was the only person the guy interviewed that said they would pin the blame on Young.

I sort of doubt Will said any such thing to Gene. But I don't want to say more lest I restart that irksome "liar lawsuit" meme that was tearing through here last week.

I share your skepticism.

But hey, was chap actually inviting us to engage in an "email bomb" campaign?

I still haven't figured out how one or two emails becomes an email bomb campaign, but I'm sure it's due to my lack of imagination.

[_Blixa]

Oh yeah, I totally missed that email bomb invitation! How terroristic!

There's no need to email Will about this, frankly, I wouldn't waste his time. However, something I may ask him about someday is the individual who hired him. The Acknowledgements for Blood of the Prophets ends thusly:

"I must finally acknowledge Frank James Singer and the able support of his executive assistant Laura Buttrell, whose vision launched this project and whose generous financial support helped make this book possible. Good luck Frank, wherever you are."

This is all I can find on him: http://www.nampn.org/cases/singer_frank.html At least I assume its the same person.

[_truth dancer]

Wow... now we have a mystery on our hands!

Hmmm....

~dancer~

[_Doctor Steuss]

The SCMC strikes again.