Time lines! This was really weighing on my mind! The group was founded by a man named Lorin Woolley. He was the Man that told of a Story about John Taylor being told by the Lord and Joseph Smith to keep Plural Marriage alive. If it weren't for him, and his "Stories" there would be no Group.
Lorin tells of an 8 hour meeting where John Taylor reportedly told some men about his experience with the Lord. If that never happened then it was all a lie. I had to find out for myself. The only place I could go were the Church archives and read people journals on Microfiche. Find out where they were during this meeting. In every single Journal I read.. none of the men were at the meeting on that day... Many of them were counties away. In one journal Entry I read something about Lorin Woolley and they even gave him a Nick Name. "Noisy" Lorin Woolley seemed to have had an ego problem even in his early years. The Centerville Fifth Ward Elders Quorum minutes, for instance, reveal that Lonn was the first to speak at quorum meetings and frequently dominated discussion. His self-evaluation as "Noisy," a nickname he picked up in his childhood, confirms this. In other journal entries he was known as a Lier. At Lorins Church trial in 1924, which resulted in his excommunication on a charge of "pernicious falsehood" where he claimed Heber C Kimball and taken 5 other wives and sealed them to already married men after the Manifesto.
I'll stop right there. Way to much information, it's making my head hurt as well. Needless to say, I kept running into contradicting stories.
One of the biggest discoveries for myself, was about Joseph and Hyrum Smith. The "Group" has a story that Joseph and Hyrums bodies were exhumed, placed in new caskets and brought to the Salt Lake Valley then buried on Temple square by Brigham Young in the fall of 1848. Lorin Woolley also has an account where Joseph appeared to him and shook his hand as well as Charles Wilcken. Joseph also appeared to John Tayor at the 8 hour meeting to lay his hands on his head to set him apart.
What I found in the Archives left me in tears.. It was THEN that I knew it was all a lie! This information can now be found online but I also have a hard copy printed out with pictures. This is what I found:
http://www.shields-research.org/Books/Polygamy_Story/LDS-Funde_Polygamy_Story-c10.htm
That Joseph and Hyrum were not resurrected in 1886 may be further borne out by the fact that the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints exhumed their bodies in 1928. Samuel O. Bennion, then President of the East Central States Mission, with three others, upon hearing about the exhumation, drove from In dependence to Nauvoo, and they arrived just after the bodies had been disinterred. He wrote in a report to President Heber J. Grant:
Fred(rick) M. (Smith, President of the Reorganized Church) took me upstairs where they were photographing and taking measurements of the skulls of Joseph and Hyrum. I could hardly keep the tears back when I saw these men handling these skulls like they were just common ordinary skulls and I said to Fred M. Why don't you let the bodies of these men rest where they were, it seemed a terrible thing to disturb their graves. He answered me, by saying that he wanted to find out if the graves of these men were down by what was called the Spring House and rather evasively avoided my question, but told me that he did not know exactly where they were buried and he wanted to find out. It is my impression brethren that he had heard reports that Brigham Young took the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum to Utah and that he wanted to prove it untrue. He did not mention that but in an indirect way he did. I said to him "Didn't your father tell you where these bodies were laid?" And he answered "Yes." I told him his father had told me where they were and that I was convinced that they were there close to the foot of Emma Smith's grave.
The lowe-r jaw of Hyrum Smith is just as near like the pictures of Hyrum as it could be. His jaw was very large and was quite square especially at the chin compared with Joseph's. Joseph's jaw was more pointed, but Hyrum's was a little more square all around than Joseph's. These men must have been big because their lower jaws were extra large and strong.
The bullet that killed Hyrum entered into his face near the lower part of his nose on the right side and broke his upper jaw just above the teeth. The break shows very distinctly where the bullet entered the face, because the bone was broken and the bullet went in an upward direction right under the eye and came out on the other side of his head, just a little above his ear and toward the front.
If Joseph's and Hyrum's bodies were exhumed in 1928, we may logically assume that they had not previously been resurrected. We may confidently conclude with Brigham Young: "When Joseph is resurrected, you may find the linen that enshrouded his body, but you will not find his body in the grave.".
Here are some links for those that want to learn more about the "8 hour meeting", Fundamentalism, And just General Information about the subject.
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Update 11-9-12
Why ohh why didn't I choose to dig a little bit deeper? I now understand a little more why the Archive worker was nervous about the materials I was asking to view. Why didn't I look deeper?
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