Dale Broadhurst Papers, 1979-2005 | Oberlin College Archives

Dale R. Broadhurst was born April 1, 1947, to Richard L. and Hazel Broadhurst, in Boise, Idaho. He attended school in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and graduated from Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, with a B.S. in Geography in 1975.

Mr. Broadhurst has worked for various federal and state agencies as a cartographer and instructor of cartography. He was the Supervisory Cartographer in the production of the Atlas of Utah (Provo: BYU Press, 1981).

He received his M.A. in Christian Education from the Methodist Theological School in Ohio (Delaware, Ohio) in 1981. His Masters project included the study, explication, and transcription of the Solomon Spalding manuscript in the Oberlin College Archives.

During most of the 1980s and 1990s Mr. Broadhurst worked in higher education development and educational volunteer service in Asia and the Pacific. He is a former Associate Professor of Language Arts Education for Chung Hua Institute, Taipei, Taiwan. He served as the Institutional Researcher and Academic Program Evaluator for Northern Marianas College, Saipan. He retired from this position in 1997.

His ancestors and their family members were associated with several different Latter Day Saint (LDS) churches. One ancestral family member is believed to have been the first member to have left the Mormons over the Solomon Spalding claims for authorship of the Book of Mormon.

Mr. Broadhurst’s interest in this aspect of his family history led to his graduate studies project, conducted, in part, at the Oberlin College Archives during 1980-81. A part of those studies involved an examination of the textual correspondence between the Book of Mormon and the Oberlin Spalding Manuscript. Mr. Broadhurst has presented professional papers on this and related topics before the Mormon History Association and the John Whitmer Historical Association.

In May of 1998, following his retirement from academic employment, Mr. Broadhurst initiated the on-line Spalding Studies Home Page. This effort has since grown into his hosting several web domains dedicated to the study of early Latter Day Saint History, which he describes as being both a “hobby” and a “labor of love.”

He and his wife, Elizabeth, reside in Hilo, Hawaii, where Mr. Broadhurst is active in an interfaith council and various historical projects. He is a member of the local Reorganized LDS branch.

Sources Consulted 

This biographical sketch was provided by Dale Broadhurst and modified by Melissa Gottwald.