Thank you for the article totally enjoyed it. I was wondering was the temple work performed for Alexander Hamilton?

James Selander from Solaray and Nutra?

I can assume that this means he did not appear seeking baptism. At what point was it brought up to get him baptized?

This link might help answer some of your questions…https://www.ldsliving.com/What-You-Didn-t-Know-About-the-Founding-Fathers-Temple-Work-Story/s/78831

Hal, you are forgetting two very important things in your question. 1) Had baptisms been performed for all of the signers of the Declaration of Independence in Nauvoo and the Endowment House or only some of them? They were speaking as group requesting ordinances for everyone in the group. 2) According to President Woodruff’s account the signers of the Declaration were asking for their temple work to be done and never confined the request to baptism alone. While baptisms for the dead were performed in the Nauvoo temple and in the Endowment House, other temple ordinances for the dead were not performed until the dedication of the St. George temple. Perhaps this is the very reason the request came at the time it did to President Woodruff.

Fascinating. I wish I could set everything aside and do a deep dive into this part of LDS history.

Kim Curtis’ Master’s Thesis addresses the fact that W.W. talks about this event right after it happened, in September. He does talk about it 22 years later as well. But it was also discussed in public immediately after. See https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5629&context=etd go to p. 97-98

I remember watching a panel of doctors discussing the crucifixion and what Christ may have suffered. One doctor was reticent to participate, and when asked why, he replied, “I don’t like making diagnoses over the phone.” With our distance from historical events and the mind of God, it’s almost impossible to put this puzzle together correctly. There are questions, yes, but there always are.

Gale, I amnot doubtinghe did them and thought they were needed to be done. there is plenty of documentation that they were done in ST George. Isn’t it strange that Wilford Woodruff’s Journal had over 7,000 pages. He discusses in detail in his journal his thinking about the work that needs to be done regarding the founding fathers work he presumes needs to be done, and then documents doing it, but omits any record of the spectacular vision in his journal. Is that something any normal person would omit? Could he forget such a spectacular vision, and then suddenly remember it in a conference talk 22 years later?
It may be logical to assume that if a church leader did it there must be a good reason, but looking at history, when Joseph Smith received the revelation to do Baptisms for the dead, he was particularly concerned about his brother Alvin. (See section 137).
Alvin’s work was done for him by Hyrum in the Missisippi. Thousands of names were done and recorded under Joseph’s supervision, so if they were inappropriately done why did Joseph who brought up the issue to begin with think the Mississippi river was appropriate for his brother. In all reality, can anyone think the Lord would reject anyone who had it done there. Wouldn’t that make God a small being to object to where something was done? Joseph didn’t say anything about it needing to be done in the temple until much later.

I wish I could answer your question. The record of the ordinances performed is in the St. George Temple, and I am aware that some ordinances were repeats of previous ordinances, even for people outside of this list. There actually was a book published about this ordinance work. I think this is the one I had heard about, but it doesn’t talk about the women. One possibility is that temple ordinances had not been completely revealed and refined in Nauvoo, so some aspects were missing and had to be redone. Also, I don’t know that all of the dead (for whom work was done by W. Woodruff and others enlisted to help) actually appeared to Wilford Woodruff. He may have had more revelation on the matter that came in other forms as the work progressed.