Salt Lake City—Hours before forger Mark Hofmann was to hand over boxes of historical items to document collector Steven Christensen in 1985, two bombs killed Christensen and the wife of Christensen’s business partner. Hofmann had promised to deliver the famed “McLellin collection”—a long-rumored trove of controversial documents historians had sought for years.

Hofmann never had the collection. Otis Traughber of Texas did. Traughber’s father was a confidante of LDS Apostle William E. McLellin in the 1870s and received the papers from McLellin’s widow. In Otis Traughber’s basement, they were mingled with his own father’s papers.

The publicity surrounding Hofmann, as well as a telephone call from one tenacious reporter, convinced Traughber to place the collection with the Marriott Library at the University of Utah. Now, two decades after its well-publicized discovery, anyone may acquire a copy of this controversial collection. Editors Stan Larson and Sam Passey, archivists at the Marriott Library, have transcribed and annotated the documents for Signature Books of Salt Lake City in a new book titled The William E. McLellin Papers, 1854-1880.

As with any story drawn from real life, there is one more wrinkle in the history of the McLellin papers. The LDS Church had first learned about the collection in 1908 and sent a representative to meet with Otis Traughber’s father and then acquired a portion of McLellin’s papers but did not announce the acquisition until 1994 when a few of the items were first published.

Larson's and Passey’s new book brings together the remaining unpublished material from LDS archives plus the bulk of the Marriott Library’s own important McLellin holdings, in addition to McLellin’s correspondence housed in the archives of the Community of Christ (formerly Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) in Missouri.

In this new publication, McLellin, whom LDS Church founder Joseph Smith handpicked to serve as one of the church’s original twelve apostles, repeatedly affirms that during his years as a church member, 1831-36, he was never told of Smith’s First Vision, nor of the appearances to Smith of an angel named Moroni, of John the Baptist, of the Apostle Peter, or of the Hebrew prophet Elijah—all important narratives in the LDS Church today. McLellin only learned of these claims years later after he had left the LDS Church.

To help readers more fully understand these and other issues, The William E. McLellin Papers features essays by five scholars: former RLDS Church Historian Richard P. Howard, BYU history professor Thomas G. Alexander, prize-winning historian D. Michael Quinn, Graceland University professor William D. Russell, and University of North Carolina graduate student John-Charles Duffy. In addition, Salt Lake Tribune reporter Dawn House recounts her discovery of the McLellin collection in Texas.

Stan Larson is the Curator of Manuscripts at the Marriott Library and editor of several other documentary histories, including Prisoner for Polygamy: The Memoirs and Letters of Rudger Clawson. Larson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, England.

Samuel J. Passey holds degrees from Brigham Young University and the University of North Texas. He is editor of the Outlaw Trail Journal. Passey recently accepted the directorship of the Uintah County Library and Regional History Center in Vernal, Utah.