Inside the lost McLellin notebook

Memorabilia collector Brent Ashworth announced last week the rediscovery

of a notebook of William E. McLellin, a Mormon apostle who was excommunicated

for apostasy in 1838.

Make no mistake about

it. William E. McLellin had no love for The Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter-day Saints after his excommunication in 1838. But the former apostle's

testimony of the Book of Mormon survived and forms a significant part of his

recently rediscovered 1871 notebook.

McLellin's widow, who

had joined the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now

the Community of Christ), gave or sold the notebook to W.O. Robertson,

who sold it to John Resch in 1919. Resch then sold it to RLDS apostle Paul M.

Hanson, who put excerpts into a newspaper in 1929. Photographs exist from the

1920s or '30s of a few pages of the notebook. The notebook remained in Hanson's

family until Brent Ashworth acquired it this summer at his store, B. Ashworth's,

in Provo, Utah.

The following excerpts are presented with the original spelling and punctuation as

they appear in the notebook. Deletions are crossed out and insertions are in

<brackets>. Editorial insertions are in (parenthesis). Ashworth hopes to

have the full notebook published soon.

WICKED PEOPLE

(What is arguably the angriest comment in the notebook by

the former member of the church was crossed out with a large \"x\" —

apparently by McClellin's own hand. It probably refers to plural marriage as

practiced by the LDS Church until 1890:)

I do not endorse many