Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was thinking about our boy Thomas Marsh and I realized I don’t actually know much about him so I resolved to spend some time on him.

I’m just getting started, but one thing stood out to me today. I figured I should start with some basics like what his name means. If you had asked me to guess the meaning of Thomas I never would have thought of “twin” but that’s indeed the meaning. This immediately reminded me of two things. First, I did a post last year called Ingwe Twins in which I provided what I thought was some pretty compelling evidence that Ingwe is not 1 but 2 people and they are twins. It garnered no interest or comment from my small band of readers.

I went a step further and even suggested Laman & Lemuel could be the Ingwe. I had a couple of follow up posts building on the idea but found myself rebuffed yet again. No one seems to think these ideas have legs. Well what I’m not sure I ever said (that I remember) is that I thought maybe Marsh could be one of the Ingwe and today for the first time I learn his name means “a twin”.

If he is one of Laman/Lemuel, I think his storyline fits. Those two wanted to be in charge and in fact were willing to kill to retain that right. In Marsh’s case, he was placed in a position to lead as a “president” yet he willingly gave it up when he thought that was the right thing to do and then abased himself in going to Utah to accept the lowly janitor/doorkeeper role, maybe proving that he is no longer one to contend for a leadership role not meant for him.

Or we could go with the alternate theory that Jacob and Joseph were also twins and perhaps they are the Ingwe. If so, we could still slide Amrod and Amras into the Laman/Lemuel spots as part of some other storyline. Marsh could be Jacob or Joseph instead. In some ways I like that idea better, especially since we have Jacob contending with the polygamy nonsense of early Nephite civilization.

Today I also learned that Marsh was a critical witness in Joseph Smith’s favor regarding the Fanny Alger accusations. Oliver Cowdery had led several people to believe that Joseph was guilty although he was seemingly careful to not come outright and say it. Marsh and a few others put the screws to Cowdery on the topic:

Thomas B. Marsh testifies that while in Kirtland last summer, David W. Patten asked Oliver Cowdery if he (Joseph Smith jr) had confessed to his wife that he was guilty of adultery with a certain girl, when Oliver Cowdery cocked up his eye very knowingly and hesitated to answer the question, saying he did not know as he was bound to answer the question yet conveyed the idea that it was true. Last fall after Oliver came to this place he [Marsh] heard a conversation take place between Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery when J. Smith asked him [Cowdery] if he [JS] had ever confessed to him [Cowdery] that he [JS] was guilty of adultery, when after a considerable winking &c. he [Cowdery] said no. Joseph then <​asked​> him [Cowdery] if he [JS] ever told him [Cowdery] that he [JS] confessed to any body, when he [Cowdery] answered no.

The winking and such was what others also said Cowdery would do when they asked him such questions about Alger. Cowdery had strongly implied Joseph had told him that he had confessed to his wife Emma so when Cowdery does his wink wink stuff again, Joseph knows what Cowdery is implying, that Joseph is carefully wording the question so that Cowdery has to technically answer no. Meaning, Joseph didn’t say “Oliver I slept with the teen girl” but instead said “Oliver, I confessed to my wife that I slept with the teen girl”. And I assume Joseph knows what Oliver is doing and that’s why he asks the second question so Cowdery has no more wiggle room to imply he’s boxed in but Joseph is really guilty. For Marsh, the second question put the matter to bed and proved that Cowdery had ulterior motives to be suggestive without making a crystal clear accusation. Marsh was a crucial witness in Joseph’s favor. So all that to say, Marsh has some anti-polygamy bona fides that could tie him to Jacob, his later Utah words notwithstanding.

Back to the twins idea, in that Ingwe Twins post I also referenced the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Twins. Wanna guess what movie two of my kids were watching out of the blue last week?

Searching his blog, I see that WJT did a Twins post a couple weeks ago that I missed or else I would have already known what Thomas meant. I don’t readily see a connection to this post other than the word “twins” but maybe I’m missing it. Anyway, we’ll see if any of this sways the RBOM Brain Trust™ on any these ideas or not.