After the expulsion of the Latter-day Saints from in winter 1838–1839, church members’ record
keeping—both institutional and personal—fell off for a few months. With
the establishment of the Saints in the , Illinois, area in summer 1839, church members
enjoyed greater stability and again began producing records more
actively. However, due to the constraints of constructing a new
community and dealing with the effects of malaria, record keeping still
lagged through late 1839 and much of 1840, especially in comparison with
what would be produced in
beginning in 1841. Some institutional records, such as minutes of the
Nauvoo high council (created circa 1839–circa 1843) and Letterbook
2 (1839–1843), were started, but JS kept a journal for only a short time in 1839.
Regardless, some contemporaneous sources are available, including those
used in this volume’s annotation.
Although perhaps not as numerous as documents from other
periods, the featured texts found herein, when taken together, are a
significant collection of sources—including minutes, correspondence, and
other documents—and often provide context for one another. Many of these
documents are copies preserved in Letterbook
2, the Nauvoo High Council Minutes, and the church newspaper
Times and Seasons (1839–1846). These documents also
provide valuable contextual material for understanding JS’s papers and
the general history of the early
church.
Some journals, diaries, histories, reminiscences, and autobiographies of
various figures in early Mormon history are also helpful in
understanding the period covered in this volume.
Letters, minutes of meetings, accounts of JS discourses, and land records compose the majority of this
volume’s documents. To preserve letters and minutes, church historians
and clerks often copied texts from loose sheets into more permanent
record books. Beginning in 1839, for instance, clerks copied surviving
letters into Letterbook 2. Sometime between 1839 and 1841, , clerk of the
high council,
began recording minutes of council meetings on blank pages in one of
’s earlier diaries. In 1841
assumed the role of recording Nauvoo high council
minutes into this book. Records of the high
council and the branch at , Illinois, also provide significant contextual
information for this volume. These sources all aid in understanding JS
and the growth of the church from 1839 to 1841.
Some featured texts come from the Times and
Seasons, first published in by and in
1839. The Times and Seasons frequently printed
correspondence from individuals proselytizing outside of Nauvoo,
including the apostles assigned to preach in , and also published
minutes of important church meetings, such as the semiannual general
conferences. Additional articles reported on important events that
occurred in Nauvoo and in the church. Other source texts—especially
accounts of discourses—come from private journals, notebooks, and other
writings by individuals living in Nauvoo or , Iowa Territory,
including those of JS’s uncle , Martha Jane Knowlton Coray,
, and .
A variety of other contemporaneous records—including
journals, diaries, and correspondence—help contextualize the featured
texts. Because JS’s own journal
exists for only the first month and a half treated in this volume, it is
necessary to rely on accounts kept by others. Indispensable journals and
diaries include those by , , , , , , , and . Elizabeth Haven, a , Illinois, resident,
wrote a letter in 1839 that expounded on decisions made at the October
conference that year. Autobiographies and reminiscences from , , ,
, , Warren Foote, , , , , , and are
important sources as well.
Legal and financial records—including land records for , Illinois, and
, Iowa
Territory—contribute additional context. Financial accounts created by
, , and provide
information about storehouses operated by the church in and financial
transactions there. Granger’s records, which were transferred to his
son-in-law , also shed light on debts
JS and his counselors in the First
Presidency owed to merchants. In addition, congressional
records—both published and unpublished—prove helpful in outlining the
progress of the church’s memorial for redress submitted to the Senate in January
1840, and state records were essential in explicating a bill
intended to incorporate the church in Illinois as well as the act that
incorporated the city of Nauvoo. Several documents featured in the
volume refer to the church’s purchase of the land in Hancock County on
which Nauvoo was built. Manuscript sources at the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library in ,
Illinois—particularly those in the John Gillet Collection and the
Gillett Family Papers—provided essential context for these land
transactions. To contextualize documents addressing the expulsion of the
Saints from in winter 1838–1839, helpful information
was gleaned from records of court proceedings and legal papers stemming
from charges against JS and other church leaders for treason and other
crimes against the state of Missouri. Correspondence from Missouri
militia officers throughout the 1838 conflict with the Saints, compiled
and preserved in the Mormon War Papers at the Missouri State Archives in
Jefferson City, further illuminate that period.
Some of the best sources on the growth of and are letters written by
and Phebe Carter Woodruff to their
respective spouses, apostles and
, who were proselytizing
in . These letters provide
insight into the poverty of the Saints in Nauvoo and Montrose and
explain doctrines JS preached, such as the practice of
performing proxy baptisms for deceased ancestors. In turn, letters from
apostles serving in England give details about the growth of the church
in England and the efforts of the apostles there, as do journals,
reminiscent accounts, and the Latter-day Saints’ Millennial
Star, a church periodical the apostles began publishing in
England in 1840.
In addition, regional newspapers in and —as well as newspapers
and journals published in larger cities such as ,
, and —offer important contextual information about
JS and the church. These contemporary
newspapers give details not otherwise available and add a useful
non-Mormon perspective. Finally, JS’s multivolume manuscript
history—in which JS’s scribes incorporated JS’s reminiscences,
institutional documents, and private papers and collections into a
documentary history of JS and the church—supplies invaluable
information, as do the history’s draft notes.
For more information on those historical manuscripts, see the Histories
series of The Joseph Smith Papers.