Most people are aware of Brigham Young as a pivotal figure in American religious and frontier history. But Brigham is also often misunderstood, seen as a larger-than-life caricature rather than as a man.

Who actually was Brigham? As a man, as a father, as a husband—as a prophet?

BECOMING BRIGHAM, a video web series, debunks fictions as well as providing sometimes surprising new insights into the real Brigham Young. In producing this series, we are working closely with Brent Rogers, Managing Historian of the Church History Department, and have thus far completed interviews with the following historians: Thomas G. Alexander, James B. Allen, Susan Easton Black, LaJean Carruth, Gerrit Dirkmaat, Brett Dowdle, Ron Esplin, Matt Godfrey, Casey Griffiths, Brittany Chapman Nash, Reid Neilson, John Peterson, Paul Reeve, and Lisa Olsen Tait.

Their insights into Brigham give a much fuller, richer picture of who he really was:

  • LaJean Carruth: “Those of us who have worked with Brigham Young’s words, . . . we see a completely different man, a kinder man. A caring man. A loving man. . . . He wanted to serve God, and he strove with everything he had to lead the Saints.”
  • Ron Esplin: “I came to know a man whose heart was with the Lord from the very beginning. . . . He believed in Jesus. He believed enough to follow a disciple of Jesus named Joseph Smith.”
  • Lisa Olsen Tait: “I do think that Brigham Young, fundamentally at the core of his soul, wanted people to flourish . . . and the way that would happen was by embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ . . . . I kind of like Brigham Young, actually. I think he’s very down-to-earth. I think he’s very human.”
  • Reid Neilson: “When I think about plural marriage, I cannot think of anything else in our history that has refined a people more . . . [it] forced the Saints, both women and men, to think, ‘Am I all in or not? . . . Was Joseph a prophet? Was Brigham a prophet?’ They had to put everything on the altar . . . .”
  • Gerrit Dirkmaat: “And the people who knew these people best, like the people who knew Joseph, the people who knew Brigham, well, they’re the ones who are certain that they’re prophets.”

PROGRESS & PLANS
Over 40 episodes have been filmed thus far and are currently in post-production. Drawing from a list of almost 80 topics, many more episodes are planned as we explore the life and times of Brigham Young. This series is designed to help increase faith, and build testimonies of modern prophets and the restored Church.

Contributors

Gerritt Dirkmaat
Gerrit Dirkmaat is an associate professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. He received his PhD from the University of Colorado in 2010, where he studied nineteenth-century American expansionism and foreign relations. His dissertation was titled “Enemies Foreign and Domestic: US Relations with Mormons in the US Empire in North America, 1844–1854.” He worked as a historian and writer for the Church History Department from 2010 to 2014 with the Joseph Smith Papers Project and served as...
Reid L. Nielson
Reid L. Neilson was named the assistant academic vice president for religious scholarly publications in 2022. In this position, Neilson oversees three organizations on campus: the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, the Religious Studies Center, and BYU Studies. Prior to this appointment, Neilson served full time as president of the Washington DC North Mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2019 to 2022. Prior to his mission presidency, Neilson was appointed as assistant Church historian and...
Lisa Olsen Tait
Lisa Olsen Tait was an adjunct professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University when this was written. Lisa Olsen Tait recently completed a PhD in English at the University of Houston, with a dissertation on Susa Young Gates, the Young Woman’s Journal, and transitional Mormonism in the 1890s. Her research focuses on late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century literature and culture, with a special interest in women writers, popular fiction, and Mormon magazines....
Ronald K. Esplin
Dr. Ronald Kent Esplin was the managing editor of the Joseph Smith Papers project when this was written and the former director of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at Brigham Young University. Esplin served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Central American Mission, when that mission not only included all the countries from Guatemala to Panama, but also had Colombia within its borders. Esplin holds degrees from Brigham...
LaJean Purcell Carruth
LaJean Purcell Carruth is the shorthand editor for Mountain Meadows Massacre: Collected Legal Papers. She is a professional transcriber of 19th- and early 20th-century documents written in Pitman and Taylor shorthands and in the Deseret Alphabet at the Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. Over the past forty years, she has transcribed Mormon and Quaker sermons, minutes, legislative proceedings, court proceedings, journals, letters, and other items. She has repeatedly presented scholarly papers on her work at such academic venues as the John...

Episodes

Episode 1: Who Killed Joseph Smith?

Most people are aware of Brigham Young as a pivotal figure in American religious and frontier history. But Brigham is also often …