After transcribing 1.2 million of his words, this researcher has something to say about Brigham Young

Superficial appearances can deceive. It’s hard to imagine a better spokesperson for this message than LaJean Purcell Carruth.

Matching her diminutive 5-foot, 3-inch frame, the 72-year-old Logan resident calls herself a “very strong introvert” who’s hesitant about her picture being taken — basically, the polar opposite of a flashy social media influencer.

Yet over the past 50 years since Carruth first learned shorthand, she has transcribed a dizzying amount of shorthand from the early history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and made important discoveries.

“People don’t know Brigham Young,” she tells the Deseret News. After decades transcribing 1.2 million words of this early leader — including hundreds of thousands of words never before available — Carruth says with confidence: “I know Brigham Young. I know his voice. I know his heart. I know his soul.”

Deeper insight about Brigham Young

Last month, a new memorial to the difficulties faced by early Saints fleeing persecution was dedicated in Council Bluffs, Iowa — commemorating several key events, including the reorganization of the First Presidency where Brigham Young became the second president of the church. This week, a new movie, “ Six Days in August ,” depicts Young’s involvement in that uncertain time of succession.

The week before, a new book involving Brigham Young came out, drawing extensively on Carruth’s research and co-authored by her, W. Paul Reeve and Christopher B. Rich, Jr., “ This Abominable Slavery .” After working to transcribe Young’s shorthand for 20 years, Carruth has recently been sharing what she’s learned in presentations at FAIR , BYU Education Week , historical conferences and articles on the church’s website.

Her interest began long ago. By age 11, this young Latter-day Saint girl already knew shorthand would be a big part of her life — sparked by an article about the Deseret Alphabet in a church magazine. By 1974, she was working professionally on late 19th and early 20th century shorthand written in Taylor and Pitman shorthand, which was used for some of the most significant early church history records — ranging from sermons, meeting notes, and dedicatory prayers to private discussions, court records and legislative reports of the Utah territorial legislature.

Through circles, dashes, curved and straight lines, and other symbols, shorthand is a quick, code-like way of recording the sounds of words. There is evidence of shorthand writing dating back to Imperial China, early Greek records of Cicero’s speeches — and hints historically that Matthew used shorthand to record some of Jesus’s teaching. Until sound recording came in the late 1890s, shorthand records often represent the best and most accurate way of capturing what was actually said verbatim. That makes these records “vital” to read, Carruth said in a 2023 presentation , “if we are to understand the teachings and ideas and speaking and style and personality of Brigham Young and others.”

At the same time, shorthand is uniquely challenging to read — “cryptic, often ambiguous,” and with symbols often having multiple meanings. “Sometimes it’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle,” the senior historian added, “especially by a person who didn’t write it” (and has no memory of what was said).

After reviewing many thousands of words by other early leaders — John Taylor, Orson and Parley Pratt, Heber C. Kimball and George A. Smith — Carruth knows John Taylor spoke fast and Orson Pratt slowly, because the “shorthand is better,” giving the transcriber at the time a “millisecond more to write.”

In addition to speaker variations, every transcriber is different, with their “own variation” of a given shorthand — which helps explain why it took Carruth 30 years and thousands of hours from when she first learned shorthand to be able to read shorthand of the prolific George D. Watt.

Honoring Watt’s legacy

George Darling Watt is best known in church history as the first English convert baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Heber C. Kimball on July 30, 1837, in Preston’s river Ribble, after winning a foot race for the privilege.

But Watt’s most lasting legacy may be the shorthand of various sermons and other communications he began to produce “almost immediately” upon arriving in Illinois to join the Saints in 1842.

“We owe a tremendous debt to George D. Watt for his shorthand record,” Carruth said in the same presentation, “which is an invaluable resource in church history.” She adds in an interview with Deseret News, “I have a very strong affection” for him — without whom, “we would be so bereft of church history.”

Transcription errors

There was, however, one substantial problem. As Watt’s shorthand was prepared for long-form publication, she explained , “he did what every other shorthand writer that I’ve ever encountered did. He altered it.”

The fact that Watt was an excellent writer, Carruth suspects, contributed to his frequent attempts to strengthen and clarify what he believed early leaders were teaching.

“Their ideas of accuracy were very different than ours,” Carruth further explained. “Like all human beings, Watt was a product of the time in which he lived. He was doing what everybody else did.”

These changes have consequences. “When words, phrases and entire passages were not transcribed,” she noted, “the reader doesn’t know they were there” — which omissions often completely changes the “emotional content” and overall “meaning” of a passage, along with the overall “impact of a text.”

A distorted image of Brigham Young

“Versions of his sermons are, at times, a poor caricature of who he was and how he really spoke,” Carruth shared — highlighting at least two ways in which “Watt’s changes to Brigham Young’s words were significant enough to change our perception of Brigham Young’s personality.”

First, pronouns were very often changed from first person “I” to a second person “you” — as well as from a more inclusive “we” or “you and I” to the more detached third person, “they.” For instance, compared with “If you and I live our religion …” in the original, Watt’s version reads: “If the Latter-day Saints will live their religion …”

Compared with “the Lord Almighty is with us and has led his people,” Watt’s version reads “the Lord Almighty is with me and his people.” And instead of “We have left our homes. … We have wandered away here, far away from civilization … to have the privilege of worshiping God according to revelations he has given us,” Watt’s version begins, “They have left their former homes and friends.”

This frequent shift away from a “much more inclusive, we,” Carruth has explained, “changes the meaning and intent” of passages — writing how this often puts Young “in a group by himself (’me’), separate from the people he addresses.” “Brigham Young as he really spoke was far more inclusive,” she has concluded .

Second: We’ve learned from the latest scholarship how frequently Brigham Young would pose questions to an audience — that “often showed understanding or invited introspection and thought.” But these questions were changed to statements in the transcription with surprising frequency — something that happens “over and over and over and over again,” this historian says.

This shift from questions to statements has again “changed the depiction of Brigham Young that has come to us through His words,” Carruth said - in many cases shifting the tone of his comment from one of seeking understanding to something more like an accusation.

Although seemingly subtle, changes like this portray Brigham Young as “far more authoritative” than his actual words, she says, making him look unkind and domineering. “Brigham Young is a much more understanding, caring and likable person, and spoke with much, much greater power, according to the shorthand record.”

The difference one word makes

Sometimes the omission of a single word created a fundamentally different view. For instance, people have assumed for a century now that Young once said, “I am now as perfect in my sphere as God,” yet he actually began that teaching about dedicated family life with, “if I am as perfect in my sphere as is God …”

In their new book, Carruth and her co-authors share an instance where the original shorthand reads, “If the army comes and makes war on us, I will turn the Indians loose. And if the army comes and makes war on us, I will stop the Western migration.”

“Even back then, up to our day, people forgot that he said ‘if,’” the historian tells Deseret News — resulting in mistaken claims that this somehow represented his new policy on Native American people in the area.

Misunderstanding his heart

What’s the biggest misunderstanding that people take away from these alterations of Brigham Young’s actual words? After a long pause, Carruth responds: “His heart — his heart and his soul. The longing of his heart and his soul was to serve God and establish Zion.”

“And to do good … he really sought to help other people. He wanted to help people better their lives.”

“His singing voice was one of the comforts of Zion’s camp,” she says, reflecting his love for music. After repeatedly warning the early Tabernacle Choir for not following their leader, he told a smaller choir in an outlying town that he wanted them to come to Salt Lake City to “show the Tabernacle Choir how to sing.”

“He loved his children” and worked to teach them not to quarrel. Young spoke highly of women and “scolded the men far more than he scolded the women,” Carruth says — describing how “He constantly told their husbands how they needed to improve their homes for their wives’ comfort” — for instance, to “really put a nail on the wall, hang up the broom, put a bench, put a stool down for the milk bucket.”

Other transcription alterations contributed to obscuring some of the true emotion in Brigham Young’s public communications. For instance, when Young said “heart” in sermons, that was repeatedly changed to “mind” — “moving the statement from the realm of the spirit to the realm of the intellect.”

Transcriptions also shifted his emphasis from “becoming” to “doing.” For instance, rather than “we are prone to wander and come short of all we should be” in the original, it was changed to “we are prone to come short of fulfilling our duties.”

As a senior historian at the Church History Library over the last 20 years, Carruth has been working to “find the voice of Brigham Young.” Reflecting on her immersion in the early leader’s words, she says in an interview, “You can feel him, can’t you?”

“He was a good, good, good man” — and yes, one “who is human — who did his best and made mistakes.”

‘The whole Brigham’

“I don’t agree with everything Brigham Young said, of course,” Carruth says. “He said some things we wished he hadn’t, but I’ve said some things I wished I hadn’t, and I suppose everybody else has too.”

The problem is that “people pick and choose a few things here and there,” Carruth says, the kind of thing that could make any of us look bad. “How would you like to be judged by the biggest mistakes you’d ever made in saying something?”

“Look at the whole Brigham, not just the outliers,” she encourages. “Look at the reality that he lived in. Look at his world. Look at his times. Look at the information he had. Look at that big picture.”

“Yes, he had a temper. Yes, he said things that we wish he hadn’t said, but the depth of his soul was to preach the gospel,” she says. Even more than Moses, Carruth insists that Young identified with Enoch.

“The cry of Brigham Young’s heart was to establish Zion that was the longing of his heart,” she shares with Deseret News — pointing out that the Lord’s teaching, “ if you are not one, you are not mine ” is the most quoted across thousands of pages of transcribed sermons. “He was striving to build a Zion community.”

Alongside more traditional views of women’s roles, Carruth remarks in one historical presentation that “he often expressed opinions on the place of women in society, on the education of women and girls, and on the responsibilities of husbands towards their wives, that pushed against the boundaries of his time.”

According to the actual shorthand record, “what he really said about women, marriage, and men’s responsibilities to their wives shows that Young was kinder towards women, less critical of them, and more concerned about their well-being, living conditions, education and development than is apparent in the altered, published versions of his sermons. His actual words show how very progressive he often was in his ideas regarding them.”

Brigham Young once said, “From what I have seen, women are more ready to speak the truth than men are. They are quicker to do right and to do good than men are, and if they had the privilege of a little guiding (and) directing, I tell you that they will produce a revolution in a community a great deal quicker than men can do it.” (“We Expect them to Tell their Husbands What to Do and What Not to Do”: Brigham Young’s Teachings on Women, Mormon History Association, June 9, 2018.)

‘Don’t pretend to know what he wanted’

Don’t pretend to think “you know what [Brigham Young] wanted,” Carruth cautions.

“Don’t throw stones and don’t make up stories. Look at the whole Brigham. Look at what he did. And why did he say he was doing it?”

“Brigham bashing” has become a “sport” of late, Carruth says — with the whole of someone’s life “boiled down” to a few challenging comments or difficult historical elements. “Those are the outliers,” this researcher emphasizes, which say “nothing about his total dedication to the Lord, how earnestly he sought the Lord (and) the truth.”

People don’t hear often enough “about his loyalty to Joseph Smith. He never, ever wavered,” she says — calling the idea of a secret rift between the two at the end of Joseph’s life “utter nonsense.”

Across many thousands of pages of shorthand, Carruth’s favorite passage captures Young’s desire to meet Joseph Smith in person for the first time: “I wanted the hand of (the) prophet in my hand, his eye to look in mine; I wanted to look in his eye, and I wanted to read that man’s heart, and I wanted to know for myself and not for another.”

After finding Joseph Smith chopping wood in the woods, Young offered to help him. Then Smith invited him back to the house. After meeting for himself this Latter-day Saint community and “this man that dictated and led and guided” them as a people, Brigham Young said, “I knew then for myself and not for another” — adding, “for the world I defy it to produce any community like this that is governed and controlled by words and words alone.”

‘A pleading humble servant’

“Find out who he was,” Carruth encourages — based on an “understanding of what Brigham Young and others really said, and who he really was.”

“There’s consistency that comes across these million words,” she adds. Aside from some natural variation as “we all change as we age,” she says there’s a “consistency in this teaching” and a “consistency in Brigham’s personality” which she summarizes as “a total desire to serve God, to follow Joseph Smith, to teach the gospel, to lead the people and establish Zion.”

“And that is from his earliest words to his last words we have.”

“I love Brigham Young’s prayers,” Carruth shared in a FAIR talk . “When Brigham Young prayed, the lion of the Lord became a pleading humble servant.”

She cites one example where Young entreats, “we ask for the aid of thy Holy Spirit to teach us how to pray, what we should ask for, and how to ask that we may receive.”

A fierceness for truth

“My work is a quest for truth,” Carruth says. “I love it. Let’s find the truth” and “let’s base our judgments on the truth.”

After hearing a story of a church member getting angry over the wording of one of these early sermons, Carruth cautions that reaching conclusions over these early records could be “judging on incorrect information” — with someone wrestling with their faith not because of Brigham Young’s actual teachings, but instead “over the wording of George D. Watt and others.”

“It’s too easy to make up stories and throw stones. It’s so easy to make a rumor, and then the rumors get spread,” she says — “even before the internet.”

After witnessing the impact of slander, Carruth says, “I am fierce about people being judged from correct information” when it comes to anyone, including Brigham Young.

“I know his soul. I know his heart. I know his yearning to build Zion. I know his longing to obey God.”