The Interpreter Foundation and Redbrick Filmworks continues to release a new episode of their not-for-profit series of mini-documentaries titled Becoming Brigham each Monday. This week, they released the following episode:

Episode 39: “Mud! Down Payment on an Exodus?”

• Why did the carefully planned 1846 dash to the Rockies become a year-long ordeal across Iowa?
• How did Brigham Young keep a freezing, starving camp of thousands moving when he himself was so ill he could barely stand?
• How did the Saints’ temple covenants sustain them when weather, mobs, and other hardships made every mile feel like failure?

This episode explores the Latter-day Saints’ forced departure from Nauvoo in February of 1846, when the first wagons crossed the Mississippi to a camp at Sugar Creek amid freezing weather, deep snow, and widespread illness, and then progress across Iowa crawled at roughly two miles a day. The hosts examine the leadership vacuum after Joseph Smith’s death, the Saints’ decision to follow the Quorum of the Twelve, Joseph’s earlier talk of a westward move to the Rocky Mountains, Brigham’s dream and map research, and the tension between finishing the Nauvoo Temple and preparing to leave. Historian Richard E. Bennett describes the scale of the migration (roughly 10,000–12,000 people), the desperate shortage of wagons, food, and money, with cascading obstacles of mud, rain, sickness, poverty, all of which forced repeated changes to the plan and tested the covenants the Saints had made in the temple.

Episode 40: “The Price of Faith? The Fire of Covenant!”

Amidst sickness and the failing plans of a mass exodus, faith and covenants are put to the test on a massive scale. Brigham Young and the Saints discover the deep relationships between faith, truth, and covenants.

• Why did the Saints strike a deal with the same U.S. government that they blamed for Joseph Smith’s death and their expulsion from Missouri?
• What kept thousands from abandoning the journey when scurvy and starvation turned Winter Quarters into a place of mass death?
• How did temple covenants become a practical force that held a scattered, desperate people together?

The Saints could not reach the Rocky Mountains in 1846 as hoped, so instead they established way stations such as Garden Grove and Mount Pisgah in Iowa. There they plowed hundreds of acres, planted crops for later companies, and buried hundreds who died from hardship. The hosts discuss the decision to cross the Missouri River before the spring runoff, the negotiations with the U.S. government for the Mormon Battalion during the Mexican-American War, and the grim realities of Winter Quarters, where scurvy killed hundreds and the Saints faced their “Valley Forge.” This episode emphasizes temple covenants, and Brigham Young’s leadership in rallying an exhausted people.

Episode 41: “Brigham Young, Insistent Disciple?”

• Why did Brigham Young insist on returning to Far West to dedicate the temple cornerstone to begin the England mission, even after the Saints had been driven from Missouri?
• How did the women of the early Church sustain their families and the missionary work while their husbands were gone for extended periods?
• What do Brigham and Mary Ann Young’s letters reveal about the mutual sacrifices and faith required for the apostles to serve their missions to England?

This episode of the Becoming Brigham series examines Brigham Young’s unwavering determination to fulfill Joseph Smith’s prophecy that the apostles would leave for their mission to England from the Far West Temple site on April 26, 1839—despite the Saints having just been driven from Missouri under the threat of an extermination order. It highlights Brigham’s complete devotion to Joseph’s instructions even when practicality suggested otherwise. The hosts also examine the often overlooked sacrifices of the women left behind who cared for families and supported the mission while their husbands were away. Through historian interviews, letters, and on-site reflection at Far West, the hosts explore both the drive of the early apostles as well as the faith and labor of the women who made the England mission possible.

Why this docuseries? Many 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, a father, a husband, and a prophet? The video web series Becoming Brigham debunks fictions and provides surprising new insights into the real Brigham Young. Learn more in the article “Becoming Brigham: The Video Series Premieres.”