By Elizabeth Kuehn, Volume Editor
Early in the Joseph Smith Papers Project, the Legal, Business, and Financial Records series was created for the legal and financial papers of Joseph Smith. In 2019 this series was divided into two distinct series—the Legal Records series and the Financial Records series. Since 2020 the latter series has been publishing images and transcripts of financial records as well as explanatory annotation and introductions on the Joseph Smith Papers website. As of spring 2022, the Financial Records series has published content for all of Joseph Smith’s Ohio and Missouri financial papers online.
There are more financial records from Joseph Smith’s time in Ohio than most people might realize. This is a result of Smith’s role in several significant financial transactions and businesses in Kirtland, Ohio, from 1831 to 1838. After the dedication of the Kirtland temple, Joseph Smith and other church leaders accelerated the development of the city of Kirtland and focused on paying the significant debts amassed while building the temple. To accomplish this, Joseph Smith became involved in three financial ventures. In fall 1836, he contracted to purchase over four hundred acres of land in Kirtland and the surrounding area; opened a store in nearby Chester, Ohio; and, in connection with other church members, decided to organize a local bank. All three of these ventures are represented in the Ohio section of the online Financial series.
The establishment of the Kirtland Safety Society Bank is perhaps the most notable of these 1836 ventures. While the failure of the bank is widely known, the surviving records are often overlooked. We now have only a fraction of the documents a nineteenth-century bank would have generated, but images and transcripts are available for several key surviving records on the Joseph Smith Papers website. These include a brief daybook, a stock ledger and index, and an assortment of letters and loose related documents.
Joseph Smith’s Ohio store is less well known. In September 1836, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon opened a mercantile store run by the company Rigdon, Smith & Co. in Chester, Ohio. The store ledger survives as well as many invoices for goods purchased for the store in June and October 1836. The invoices show the purchase of a wide assortment of goods, including dry goods, hardware, and fabric. Using these records, Mark Staker, a curator in the Church’s Historic Sites Division, worked with textile experts to determine the type of carpeting that was likely used in rooms in the Kirtland temple and in the Smith home in Kirtland. This carpet, called “Venetian Plaid,” was a colorful common weave of the time that was considered both respectable and durable.
These Ohio records are only a beginning. Over the next few years, financial records from Illinois and Iowa will likewise be available online. Though sometimes overlooked, these financial records provide us with a more complete picture of Joseph Smith and the communities he built.