The featured texts found in this volume compose a
significant collection of contemporary sources—including correspondence,
minutes, discourses, JS revelations, and other documents—and
often provide context for one another. More than one-third of the
featured texts are letters. JS relied on letters to communicate with
church leaders and missionaries in distant locations after he moved from
, Ohio, to , Missouri, in early 1838. While incarcerated during
winter 1838–1839, JS continued to compose epistles to counsel church
members and govern the church during the forced migration of the
Latter-day Saints from . He also exchanged several letters with
his wife and other family members.
Several original letters are extant and reproduced in this volume.
Church clerks preserved other correspondence by copying the texts of the
original letters into record books. For instance, general church clerk
and First Presidency scribe
copied several letters into the “Scriptory Book,” JS’s March–September 1838 journal. Additionally, after JS’s scribe
relocated from Missouri
to in spring 1839, he copied letters for JS into Letterbook
2
(1839–1843).
This volume also features meeting minutes, discourses, and
revelations. JS participated in meetings of the high
council in , and clerk
recorded minutes of the council’s 1838 meetings on loose sheets. In
1842, copied Robinson’s minutes into
Minute
Book 2 (1838, 1842, 1844). In April and May 1839, kept minutes of church meetings over which
JS presided in , Adams County,
Illinois; the original minutes are featured here. JS also gave many
discourses, and the scribes he employed to keep his journal, and James
Mulholland, sometimes recorded the discourses in JS’s journal.
Additionally, wrote about several JS
sermons in a summer 1839 journal as well as in a notebook titled “Book
of Revelations,” which Woodruff brought with him on his proselytizing
mission in Europe. copied accounts of three additional JS
discourses in his “Pocket Companion” notebook. Richards, who was in when JS delivered these
discourses in summer 1839, copied accounts from other missionaries after
they arrived in England. JS also dictated several revelations during the
period covered in this volume; the versions featured herein are early
copies made by and other early church
leaders.
This volume also includes several financial and legal
documents. When JS and abruptly departed in January 1838, they left their financial
obligations to merchants and lawyers unsettled. Church agents and worked to
pay the debts the church leaders owed and to resolve litigation against
them. Whereas Marks was instructed to move to in July 1838, Granger remained involved in Kirtland
finances throughout 1838 and 1839. In , receipts and promissory notes from fall 1838
suggest that paid several of JS’s debts.
The conflict with anti-Mormons in Missouri during summer and fall 1838
led to legal charges against JS and other church leaders for treason and
other crimes against the state of Missouri, resulting in court
proceedings and a large corpus of legal papers. Several affidavits,
petitions, and other legal documents that were either signed by JS or
produced by scribes or attorneys on JS’s behalf are featured herein. The
case files for these legal proceedings will be available on
josephsmithpapers.org. Once in , JS was involved in
acquiring land for Mormon settlement. In late April 1839, he and the
other members of the First Presidency acted as sureties for purchased
land, and in August 1839, JS and other church leaders contracted with
to acquire land in
and around ,
Hancock County, Illinois.
Journals, letters, and newspapers were invaluable in
annotating the documents in this volume. The content in the Scriptory
Book manifests JS’s optimism about ’s potential, his struggles with dissenters, the
establishment of Latter-day Saint settlements in Carroll and counties, and the
outbreak of conflict with anti-Mormons in August and September 1838.
Letters preserved in the George Albert Smith Papers at the Church
History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, and in ’s letterbook at the Huntington Library in San
Marino, California, contain valuable information on the activities of
dissenters in and . ’s
missionary journal is an indispensable source for understanding his
correspondence with JS. The church newspaper Elders’
Journal (1837–1838) and regional and national periodicals
provide additional information.
Most record keeping among church members ceased when the
conflict between the Latter-day Saints and other Missourians climaxed in
October 1838. The journals of and are notable
exceptions and provide contemporaneous Mormon perspectives on the
conflict. In contrast to the dearth of Mormon records, militia officers produced substantial correspondence
throughout the 1838 conflict, providing significant information. Copies
of the militia leaders’ letters and other documents were later compiled
and preserved in the Mormon War Papers, housed in the Missouri State
Archives in Jefferson City, Missouri.
In November 1838, following JS’s arrest, of
the fifth judicial circuit presided over a preliminary hearing in , Ray County, Missouri, where forty-two witnesses—several
of whom were disaffected Latter-day Saints—testified for the
prosecution. These testimonies provide important historical material,
but given the adversarial proceedings in which they were produced, they
have been used with caution when annotating documents herein. Two of the
witnesses— and , who were excommunicated along with other dissidents in
March 1839—wrote detailed accounts of the conflict within a year of the
cessation of violence. Although these accounts were shaped by
disaffection and, at times, hostility toward JS and the Saints, they
provide valuable information regarding the events in October 1838. For
background on Corrill’s history, see volume 2 in the Histories series of
The Joseph Smith Papers.
The images and transcripts of the November 1838
testimonies are on this
website.
Primary sources also inform the annotation for the
documents created during JS’s winter 1838–1839
imprisonment in , his escape from state
custody on 16 April 1839, and the Saints’ migration to . kept a detailed journal and
exchanged correspondence with his wife, , describing the
prisoners’ experiences. Fellow prisoner also kept a useful journal in the . Although
Wight’s original journal is not extant, entries from the journal were
preserved in volume 2 of The History of the Reorganized Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Another important source
of information is the meeting minutes of a committee formed in late January 1839 to oversee the
migration of church members from to Illinois.
Contemporaneous sources have also been used to annotate
documents that illuminate the Saints’ resettlement in and around and then at ,
Illinois, and across the in , Iowa
Territory. After arrived in Quincy in
April 1839, he kept a journal that has been referenced extensively in
this volume. Another key source is JS’s 1839
journal, which was kept by .
Additionally, in July 1839 the Saints founded a new church newspaper,
the Times and Seasons, which published letters from
missionaries and articles chronicling events in . Regional newspapers also printed articles about the
Latter-day Saints and their activities.
In 1839, the Saints launched a coordinated campaign to
obtain redress for their losses in . As part of this effort,
the Saints produced several historical narratives describing their
experiences in the state during the time covered in this volume.
Hundreds of church members wrote short affidavits and petitions
documenting their losses in Missouri. In addition, Latter-day Saints
, , , and Morris Phelps wrote
detailed histories of the conflict from the Saints’ perspective. In
1843, , Pratt, Rigdon, , and others reported important details regarding the
conflict when they testified before the , Illinois,
municipal court in proceedings stemming from the efforts of Missouri
officials to extradite JS.
For some events in this volume’s time period, the only
relevant sources are personal recollections and autobiographies written
years later. In the mid-1840s, church historian and his clerks composed the portions of JS’s manuscript history covering the 1838 conflict. The
clerks’ efforts included interviewing eyewitnesses of important events
in . In 1844 and 1845, JS’s mother, , dictated her autobiography, which includes details of the conflict that
are found nowhere else. Apostle ,
with the assistance of multiple scribes, composed his autobiography
intermittently throughout the mid-nineteenth century. In general,
reminiscences are helpful in filling gaps in the contemporaneous
historical record. Such sources have been used when necessary and with
caution to annotate some documents in this volume.