Information Or Biography John Bennett

[foster]

With the recent interest in Nancy Rigdon, John Bennett was introduced. Has anyone written on him? Why would people consider him a polygamy insider? A few excerpts from Bennett's book about Joseph did not read as credible.

[volgadon]

I've read selections from the biography, Saintly Scoundrel: the Life and Times of Dr. John Cook Bennet. Very good stuff.

[CA Steve]

I've read selections from the biography, Saintly Scoundrel: the Life and Times of Dr. John Cook Bennet. Very good stuff.

 

Excellent book and fairly inexpensive here.

 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Saintly-Scoundrel-Times-Bennett/dp/0252022823/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

 

That is if you get the last cheap used one.

Edited September 1, 2013 by CA Steve

[why me]

Greg Smith will be having something coming out soon, I believe. A part of his piece will deal with Nancy Rigdon and John Bennett. I think that it will be a game changer.

[foster]

Greg Smith will be having something coming out soon, I believe. A part of his piece will deal with Nancy Rigdon and John Bennett. I think that it will be a game changer.

Where did you hear of something about Bennett from Greg Smith?

[why me]

Where did you hear of something about Bennett from Greg Smith?

It is within a bigger piece that he is working on. No details can be provided at the moment because the article is in draft form. But then again, it may not be coming out soon. I think that it is a work in progress.

Edited September 1, 2013 by why me

[Bob Crockett]

Saintly Scoundrel is a great read.   Bennett went on to have an interesting career.   Single-handedly introduced the tomato as fit for human consumption.

[foster]

It is within a bigger piece that he is working on. No details can be provided at the moment because the article is in draft form. But then again, it may not be coming out soon. I think that it is a work in progress.

If details can not be provided how do you know of details.

[foster]

On fairmormon, or the fair wiki, I did find that fairmormon has 3 Chapters from Gregory L Smith about John Bennett for downlaod . The pdf is mark "do not copy" and for private use only, but Fairmormon has had the pdf hosted and available to the general public for about 5 years. Will have to read it more thoroughly to see if discusses Bennetts status among the Saints before he started promoting his own ways.

Edited September 2, 2013 by foster

[cinepro]

On fairmormon, or the fair wiki, I did find that fairmormon has 3 Chapters from Gregory L Smith about John Bennett for downlaod . The pdf is mark "do not copy" and for private use only, but Fairmormon has had the pdf hosted and available to the general public for about 5 years. Will have to read it more thoroughly to see if discusses Bennetts status among the Saints before he started promoting his own ways.

 

I got kicked out of another thread for posting a link, so let's see if I can stay kosher.

 

If you Google "Bennett Nancy Rigdon", one of the results on the first or second page will lead to a FAIR Article titled "Polygamy book/ John C Bennett".  This article has a link to the PDF being discussed.  It says "Click here to download".

Edited September 2, 2013 by cinepro

[Nevo]

Greg Smith was the one who posted the link on the FAIR wiki inviting readers to "Click here..." so I think he's okay with people reading it.

[BCSpace]

It is reported that:

 

Eventually, however, rumors of adultery, homosexuality, unauthorized polygamy, and the performance of abortions emerged. While Bennett was mayor, he was caught in private sexual relations with women in the city. He told the women that the practice, which he termed "spiritual wifery," was sanctioned by God and Joseph Smith, and that Joseph Smith did the same. When discovered, he privately confessed his crimes, produced an affidavit that Joseph Smith had no part in his adultery and was disciplined accordingly.

 

Is this particular affidavit available somewhere for all to see online?

[why me]

On fairmormon, or the fair wiki, I did find that fairmormon has 3 Chapters from Gregory L Smith about John Bennett for downlaod . The pdf is mark "do not copy" and for private use only, but Fairmormon has had the pdf hosted and available to the general public for about 5 years. Will have to read it more thoroughly to see if discusses Bennetts status among the Saints before he started promoting his own ways.

Yep, you found it.

[why me]

I got kicked out of another thread for posting a link, so let's see if I can stay kosher.

 

If you Google "Bennett Nancy Rigdon", one of the results on the first or second page will lead to a FAIR Article titled "Polygamy book/ John C Bennett".  This article has a link to the PDF being discussed.  It says "Click here to download".

Which is why I was a little shy. I figured that I could lead the horse to water by power of suggestion.

[foster]

It is reported that:  Is this particular affidavit available somewhere for all to see online?

Bcspace did you just copy and paste from Greg Smiths paper which is marked "do not copy", and if you did why did you provide the reference.

[BCSpace]

Bcspace did you just copy and paste from Greg Smiths paper which is marked "do not copy", and if you did why did you provide the reference.

 

Nope.  Wikipedia.  Try again.

[BCSpace]

Another curious thing:
 

John C. Bennett briefly returned to Nauvoo in December 1843, but the sole record of that visit is a notation in Joseph Smith's Daybook from his General Store showing a payment of the rent Bennett owed for the 39 weeks he lived in the Smith home in 1840-1841. After December 1843 John Bennett is recorded to have lectured only once more against Mormonism during Joseph's life, in Boston, during the spring of 1844. At the 1844 Boston lecture, Bennett was not well received. He was pelted with rotten eggs and chased through Boston by the 'vast assemblage,' who ran over several Boston police officers in the process. After Smith's assassination in Carthage, Illinois on June 27, 1844, Bennett resumed his lectures against polygamy in an attempt to win converts for Strang. Bennett has been accused of having a part in Smith's murder, but, as his biographer Andrew F. Smith states, based on the extant evidence, "Bennett appears to have had no influence on the events that unfolded in Carthage during June 1844"[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Bennett

 

 

Any online record of what Bennett said that angered the Boston crowd?

[why me]

If details can not be provided how do you know of details.

I was referring to linking and pasting the information. A draft piece of writing may contain some errors that would be changed for the final copy. Or the writing may not be up to par because it is a draft.

 

As for the link to the Greg Smith paper,  apologies to Cinepro if it is available on the FAIR site.  Carry on.

[Calm]

 

 

As for the link to the Greg Smith paper,  apologies to Cinepro if it is available on the FAIR site.  Carry on.

Assume this is the moderator in red, Greg is okay with it being linked.....I asked him.

[BCSpace]

Ha!  Even William Law didn't like Bennett:
 

The willingness of the Sangamo Journal and others to publish John C. Bennett’s claims, and the inclination of more recent authors to accept those allegations at face value, obscures the contempt in which many others at the time—including some who opposed Joseph Smith and the church he led—held Bennett and his reports. The Boston Courier, for example, had little regard for the “pretended revelations of J. C. Bennett . . . an offender against decency, who having been punished for his faults now wishes to take vengeance upon his judges for their righteous decisions.”65 Thomas Ford remembered Bennett as “probably the greatest scamp in the western country,” while Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, saw Bennett’s book as “nothing more than a collection of all the newspaper trash about the Mormons that has been published for the last few years.”66 Similarly, the editor of the Boston Investigator made it clear that although he questioned the claims of Mormonism, he doubted “the notorious John C. Bennett” and his “miserable catch-penny book” even more:

 

We place no sort of reliance . . . upon any testimony of Bennett himself, and indeed the testimony which he says was given by others is rendered suspicious by his own contemptible treatment of the Mormons. He says he went among them a stranger; they gave him a friendly welcome, elevated him to stations of honor and trust, and for years he lived upon their bounty. When he could no longer fleece them, the ungrateful whelp, in return for their kindness, published to the world a large volume of their pretended vices and immoralities. . . . We have no confidence in the statements of a fellow guilty of such consummate meanness and hypocrisy, and we cannot suffer any extract from his vile work to appear in our paper without saying beforehand, that we heartily despise and detest him.67

Even William Law, who had served as a counselor to Joseph Smith before turning against him and publishing the Nauvoo Expositor, remembered Bennett as a “scoundrel” rather than as an ally whose charges against Smith might be used to sustain his own.68

Such assessments by Bennett’s contemporaries suggest that historians must be cautious when using Bennett’s reports as a means of understanding events in Nauvoo—including some recorded in Joseph Smith’s journal. For example, several entries in the journal reference “certain difficulties” and “surmises which existed” between Smith and Sidney Rigdon during this period, as well as the disaffection of Rigdon’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Nancy, from the church.69 Some authors have found the explanation for these difficulties in Bennett’s claim that Nancy had refused Joseph Smith’s invitation to become one of his plural wives.70 While the cause of these “difficulties” may have been a rejected proposal of marriage to Nancy, it is far from certain. Other issues also served as a wedge between Rigdon and Smith in Nauvoo, and given the nature of the evidence, it is not certain that such a proposal was even made in the first place.71 For his own part, Joseph Smith summarily dismissed Bennett’s charges as falsehoods and called for elders to “go forth and deluge the States with a flood of truth” to counteract Bennett’s influence.72

http://josephsmithpapers.org/intro/introduction-to-journals-volume-2