These are both Books of Mormon printed in Palmyra, N.Y. in 1830, bought by me in this unrestored condition. The top book was also bound in Palmyra, as part of the contract to commercially print and bind 5,000 copies. It also has a rare and extra tree-sheep treatment to look like walnut burl. However, the darker bottom book was bound in Kirtland, Ohio, by Mormons, as part of a print over-run in Palmyra. Just a handful of books were taken from Palmyra in unbound sheets in a wagon, and bound in Kirtland when the other copies sold-out in 1837. The Kirtland-bound copies also have a separately printed index or "References" printed in Kirtland. This particular copy is signed by the wife of Brigham Young.
Side-by-side portraits of Eliza Roxcy Snow and Emma Hale Smith, both painted in 1842 by the same Nauvoo portrait maker, Sutcliffe Maudsley. Follow me as I will be posting more early portraits by the same artist and many other Mormon artists and early photographers.
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William Clayton diaries
June 15, 2026
Another underground typed version of the secret William Clayton diaries has been leaked to me ahead of Yale University publishing an authorized version.
No surprises. Nothing new about Joseph Smith being a polygamist.
The diaries were supposed to be the principal contemporary document proving that Joseph Smith instituted polygamy—at least according to conspiracy theorists who believe hundreds of early Mormons secretly exchanged wives and daughters in Nauvoo and got away without a trace. Other than this diary, all sources rely on talebearing and folktales.
The diary turns out to be the same slim evidence produced before, and likely not original to all of the dates it purports to cover. At least not in my professional opinion as a Mormon document examiner since 1981. No wonder those with religious fervor are hiding it. Remember: there are no love letters, wedding licenses, invitations, wives’ diaries, wedding rings, homes, beds, or children. Just rumors and Victorian fiction.
I suppose Joseph Smith was “flirting with polygamy” insofar as his entire ministry was an argument for the restoration of both New and Old Testament concepts, and a reconciliation of them into one. But he preached against present polygamy so resoundingly on May 26, 1844, that one cannot reasonably visualize him sneaking through Nauvoo at that time with thirty, forty, or fifty families of his own and only one house.
The New Mormon History school of thought, founded in the late 1960s, requires members to believe all rumors, holding that all documents and folk stories are equal and true; whether they are created in 1843 or 1893, or created inside or outside of the faith. Except, they prohibit believing the Smith family, especially Joseph’s own accounts.
From this diary, though, no polygamy smoking gun. Again. Instead, there are more interesting entries. I want to pivot now to Clayton’s firsthand description of the installation of the Nauvoo Temple starstones.
On 21 April 1845, Clayton wrote:
“At half past 2, I went out to see the first star put up on the South East corner of the Temple, having been notified by brother Player that it was going up. I met brother Kimball when I got there, and we sat down on brother Cutlers fence to watch the slow upward progress of the ‘star.’ At 1/4 to three it was properly fixed in its place by brother Wm. W. Player, and as quick as it was secured brother Edward Miller sprang to the top of it, and was immediately followed by Elisha Everett. They had been watching and planning to see which could be on it the first. The ‘star’ looks well and will serve to beautify the Temple very much.”
If you do not know, I acquired and now own all four of the original Nauvoo Temple starstones known to survive. I am the only one who can stand on them today.
A starstone is a carved limestone relief measuring approximately 36 by 54 inches. It replaced the Doric-order triglyph on the temple frieze. Each starstone sat above a 36-inch Doric regula stone with six projecting guttae, which rested upon the architrave. Together they formed part of the distinctive exterior ornamentation of the Nauvoo Temple.
These are the earliest known Latter Day Saint sculptures. In one acquisition, I rescued four sunstones, four starstones, and two moonstones—besides a previously discovered sunstone and moonstone I had acquired years earlier. These are the most valuable Mormon art objects in existence—the iconic images of Mormonism itself.
Groundbreaking for the Nauvoo Temple occurred in 1841. The building was completed, though not entirely finished, during the winter of 1845–46. It was burned in 1848. A Mississippi River derecho struck it in 1850. It was dynamited in 1865.
My role has been to independently rescue, preserve, and share priceless Latter Day Saint history, art, architecture, and material culture. The recovery of the lost and legendary suns, moons, and stars of the Nauvoo Temple has been the climax of a mission that occupied twenty-five years of my life. It remains the monumental triumph and greatest achievement of my career.
Although my principal avocation has long been the collection of rare books and manuscripts, I have also devoted decades to identifying, acquiring, preserving, and sharing Mormon artifacts and architectural fragments. In these efforts we have rescued temple art and temple history itself.
These stones now reside among a vast collection of Kirtland Temple artifacts, Smith-family paintings executed from life, Joseph Smith documents, first editions of Mormon scriptures, succession-crisis records, and countless other forms of Mormon material culture that I have spent more than forty-five years identifying, preserving, and sharing with future generations.
Sometimes authentic documents do not cooperate the way historians hope. The latest Clayton diary leak was expected to illuminate polygamy. Instead, it illuminated my stars. And in the end, Joseph Smith’s stars have proved more enduring than William Clayton’s tall tales.
Oh! I just made another breathtaking discovery. I stumbled upon the Smith-family medical records in ledgers from the Town of Norwich, Vermont, 1809–1821. And of course I bought them.
Joseph Smith, the Prophet, lived in Norwich from 1814–1816. It is not my oldest Smith family medical document. I also have the Lebanon, N.H., lectures of Joseph Smith’s 1812 surgeon, and a 1799 letter from Smith’s grandmother about the impending birth of his brother Hyrum in Tunbridge, Vermont. I have Smith-family documents from the Revolutionary War.
So little is known of the roots of Mormonism in Norwich that the President of the Mormon History Association recently called Norwich a “city” in his new history of Mormonism. Norwich has never been a city. Countless other Mormon professors among his colleagues were acknowledged for proofreading the book, and none caught the mistake. So much for peer review. The scholars know little about the Smiths in Vermont, but I have the records. And Palmyra was not in upstate New York in 1830 – another confusion by the same author.
But it is my job to know the difference between a city, a town, a village, and a hamlet. A Vermont town is not an urban center, but a surveyed tract of land, ordinarily conceived as six miles by six miles, or 36 square miles; though frequently irregular, as in Norwich at 45 square miles. And the population of these 45 square miles was 2,100 in 1820, and only grew to 3,612 by 2020.
I specialize in the Smith family from 1638 to the present, with some discoveries going back to the 1300s – to a landed, learned, clerical, and consequential ancestry. I continue this interest through the succession crisis of 1844–1856, with the martyrdom of prophetic claimant James Strang, and the Mormon Trail handcart mistakes that same year; then to 1877, after the American centennial and the death of Brigham Young; and to a lessening extent to 1946, after the last world war and the death of Frederick Madison Smith.
Ever since I bought my first Joseph Smith-period Book of Mormon as a teenager, in 1982, I have made it my mission to make a once-in-a-lifetime discovery every month. At that time I was driving a limousine for the Playboy Club, and I had already been immersed in Mormon history as a student since 1973. I then became a restauranteur, then an executive for several consecutive international hotel corporations headquartered in Chicago. Meanwhile, I worked my way through school around the country, including graduate school, in the history of economic theory. Rare books and paintings were a natural transition from gourmet food presentation, as both are material culture. When I left the hotel business in 1989, I had sold more sushi in Florida than any other entity; and I was selling more alcohol in Missouri than any other retailer.
Since 1991, however, half of all new discoveries in Mormon history have come through my hands. Depending on who is asked, this has been described as a talent, a gift, a blessing, or merely brilliant; and I have been called the Indiana Jones of Mormonism, or even the Last Mormon. My luck is so uncanny that my critics will never miss an opportunity to remind my audience that I am not a credentialed historian. I am illegitimate and illiterate.
Some have gossiped that I am a forger so skilled I have never been caught; or that I commit national museum heists and have never been prosecuted; or that the books are simply invisible in my imagination; or that I have a million books, but am not qualified to interpret them.
Mostly, my critics think I want to be a university historian instead of an entrepreneur and collector. If I were in their “academy,” I would be like them in a cubicle or classroom, reading sleepy articles about globalism, gender, and race; instead of in an underground cave filled with treasures that overturn our conceptualization of the roots of Mormonism. I am having more fun, whether one calls me a practical historian, a practicing historian, or just historical malpractice.
I have a high life, traveling the world and working at home; but either way surrounded by moldy books. I have smile lines, and my critics have frown lines. I like people, and they do not. One may say almost whatever one wishes below my posts, because they do.
The most unbelievable printing of the Book of Mormon ever!!! You have heard all about Martin Harris mortgaging his farm to pay a commercial printer in 1830. But look at the bottom of this edition! PRINTED BY JOSEPH SMITH. It was the only one!!!!! I have his own copy. And he revised it. And notice the change in his name. And he is the translator and not the author. Follow my page for cool items from my library, archives, and museum. Comment if you like this book.
https://www.facebook.com/johnhajicek/posts/pfbid02kTKqpDJ4Ar5R9B4fyxMxMadAPPHZKFsZ6HrtL5EidCwALwxHTVhwrp4XRcXaAoHsl?__cft__[0]=AZatOH4XGLMgrT0Dk_h1N8NtWJaAmcP-gcQyNrL8RqhqUg818KUNOCWGWeEwXF3AJ0yjMUt8UvNustrHZuseUrNKfUJkOnSTbyl5B3-SVVY48o6aNVM4TfogBfLDGJMSA5Q1zIBXY5xUSbzDP9CpBPaRAmKnw-K_Gawgvnml7KfnXsBR1MpZOWMa4hr3yOc4E_c&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R
Samantha Hajicek
One reason this edition is so valuable is that the 1841 Liverpool printing, based on the 1837 Kirtland edition, became the version the LDS Church used for reprints for decades. Because of that, many of Joseph Smith’s later revisions from the 1840 and 1842 editions were not widely reflected in LDS printings until they were incorporated in the 1879 edition. It is also the last edition printed during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and was produced in the smallest press run, making it the scarcest and hardest to find. If I could only own one edition, it would be this one.
John Hajicek
Eric Pement, they printed 5000 of the first edition and he printed 500 of this edition or slightly more.
Matty Ridu
Joseph did not print this. He was the publisher and person responsible for it, but the actual printing was done under his direction and authority by the Times and Seasons press. “Printed by Joseph Smith” reflects oversight and ownership, not hands-on printing. There were only a few thousands of this edition printed, and today they are worth a few tens of thousand dollars give or take.
John Hajicek
Matty Ridu 500 or 600+ printed, and he was the printer in every sense that few homebuilders are driving steel nails and few proprietors were setting lead type.
“Things fall into my lap that should not.” -- John Hajicek
This incredible discovery is Caroline Grant, the wife of William Smith, and therefore sister-in-law of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. They were from the founding family of Mormonism.
This incredible image is made with pigments that have binders of gum-arabic and eggs. Made in Nauvoo, the City of the Mormons, in 1844. He was the earliest known Mormon artist. This is part of his groups that are the first paintings of Mormon women.
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