Young's will is on the block

Brigham Young's last will and testament designated that $25 from his estate was to be paid each month per wife. Now, the original will of the pioneer LDS leader could be selling for significantly more than that stipend — a thousand times more.

Alderfer Auction Co. of Hatfield, Pa., will auction what is believed to be Young's original last will via phone, live, absentee and eBay bidding on June 8. Bids, which start at $25,000, may top $60,000.

"I would be very anxious to see it," Brigham Young University history professor Ronald Walker said. "Most historians of 19th-century Utah would see this as an important piece of the Brigham Young puzzle. It would be a very significant find because it is historically important and biographically important."

Dated Nov. 14, 1873, the document details monetary allotments left among 18 of Young's wives and 47 children when he died on Aug. 29, 1877, at age 76. The 12-page manuscript is signed by Young 12 times and initialed by him nine times. Notable Latter-day Saint figures, such as Joseph F. Smith, also signed the document as witnesses.

Curt Bench, owner of Benchmark Books in Salt Lake City, which sells and appraises rare and out-of-print books, said Alderfer's estimate that the document could sell for $60,000 to $80,000 is probably accurate. He said most letters from Young with an original signature go for $5,000 to $10,000 and sometimes more depending on the content.

"That's more than almost any Brigham Young document ever sold," Bench said about the last will and testament. "It's a very unusual document, and this kind of thing doesn't turn up very often."

The auction company acquired the document through a northeast Pennsylvania estate, near the company's location. Alderfer Fine Arts auctioneer Brent Souder said the estate wished to be anonymous, so background is not known on how the last will and testament was obtained.

Bench said the document was probably acquired through Thomas L. Kane, a non-Mormon former Army colonel who befriended the Mormons and was good friends with Young. Some of Kane's papers, which BYU owns, included an early draft of Young's will that was canceled in 1873.

Walker, a scholar with the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute, said the document itself prompted historical controversy.

"When he died, there was a long, extended lawsuit over the will, and it was challenged by some of the children in the family who felt that they had been overlooked," he said. There also was confusion over what belongings were church property and what belongings were personal property.

Numerous archivists fear the manuscript might be a clerical copy. During the 19th-century, documents and signatures were copied by clerks so an original manuscript could have duplicates.