Introduction to Documents, Volume 9: December 1841–April 1842
Joseph Smith Documents from December 1841 through
April 1842
Winters in the young city of , Illinois,
were typically tranquil. As the
froze over with ice, steamboats ceased bringing immigrating converts
up the river. Farming, land clearing, and construction of homes and
businesses slowed to a near standstill. The relative quiet of these
months allowed Joseph Smith and other and civic leaders to turn their attention to
organizational development. The winter of 1840–1841
had seen Nauvoo incorporated as a municipality and the church’s
ecclesiastical restaffed after turbulent years in . The following winter, only two and a half years
after the Latter-day Saints selected the village of
as their new place, was much the
same. December 1841 to April
1842—the period covered in this ninth volume of the
Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers—witnessed
continued organizational development, including the establishment of
a Freemasonry lodge in Nauvoo. Perhaps the most significant and
long-lasting development was the creation of a benevolent women’s
organization known as the .
The documentary record from these
winter months shows a measurable increase in Smith’s record keeping—a trend that
continued in the few remaining years of his life. Whereas previous
volumes in the Documents series have typically spanned a year or
more of his life, the 102 documents featured in the present volume
cover less than half a year, and no subsequent volume in the series
will capture more than half a year of Smith’s activities. This
volume’s comparatively short time span of only five months is the
result of an explosion of Joseph Smith documents created during his
years in . With the
relative peace of their new home, and having
spent the first two years on the Nauvoo peninsula making extensive
improvements to the physical environment—clearing trees, planting
crops, and draining the swampy flatlands along the —the Saints had more time to
record their experiences and to correspond with friends and family.
The large influx of immigrants to the city each year meant more
people to buy land from Smith or to witness and record his public
discourses. The newly formed municipal and religious organizations
in which Joseph Smith played some role generated a significant body
of minutes, financial ledgers, and other institutional documents.
And as Smith’s own responsibilities grew in number and variety, his documentary
output increased commensurately.
The trajectory represented by the
documents in this volume is one of growth and development, both for
the church and for the city of —as well as for Joseph Smith
individually. The correspondence, minutes, discourses, and other
documents featured here capture and emphasize the breadth of his
activities. In late 1841 and early
1842, Smith continued to lead a church and a people, to
command the city’s militia as lieutenant general, to sell land to
incoming Saints, to serve on the city council, to meet with the
Nauvoo
and other ecclesiastical bodies, and to be a
husband and father—all of which resulted in documents reproduced
herein. But to these duties he added other responsibilities. Indeed,
December 1841 to April
1842 witnessed numerous important developments that
shaped the remainder of Smith’s life. In these brief five months,
Joseph Smith opened a , was elected vice mayor of Nauvoo,
became the editor of the church’s Nauvoo newspaper, published texts
that would later be canonized as church scripture, joined the
fraternal society of Freemasonry, and organized the Female Relief
Society, which would become a hallmark of the church. And amidst all
his obligations, in April 1842 Smith applied for
bankruptcy under a new federal law.
Although the relative wealth of extant
documents from this period allows for a more vivid portrait of Joseph Smith’s life than is
possible for previous decades, important facets of his activities
are absent from the documents. Perhaps most notable among these
elements are Smith’s plural marriages. Smith and his wives entered
these plural marriages in small, private settings with a mutual
understanding of confidentiality. He likely married , , , and during these months, and yet there are no
references to these marriages in any of the featured documents. Though
the practice was an important aspect of his life, references to it
are virtually absent from the documents featured in this volume, as
well as from other contemporaneous records. When plural marriage does appear in
contemporary documents, it is typically mentioned obliquely and in
passing. The first and last documents in this volume—a revelation that instructed to
“hearken to the counsel of my servant Joseph in all things
whatsoever he shall teach unto her” and an alleged letter to
justifying a controversial new commandment—do not mention plural
marriage explicitly but can be fully understood only when placed
within its context.
The documents featured in this volume
are likewise silent about Joseph Smith’s
renewal of his personal journal. In December 1841 Smith instructed one of
his scribes,
, to keep a journal
of Smith’s activities—much as
and had in 1838 and 1839. The
documents in this volume contain no direct reference to the journal
and provide few clues as to Smith’s motivations for resuming a
journal—and consequently work on a history of the church—after the
two-year gap since his last. However,
this journal is a vital resource for contextualizing the events and
themes that do appear in documents from December 1841 through April
1842. For example, a December 1841
revelation featured herein instructed to serve a mission
to to solicit donations
for construction of the
and
the (a boardinghouse for visitors to Nauvoo, the
church’s central city). However, only Smith’s journal provides
essential information about Snider’s reluctance and delays in
departing, as well as Smith’s sense of the urgency of the mission
and frustrations about Snider’s hesitant response.
The volume features four revelations, all of which contained direction for
individuals rather than for the entire church and were never
canonized. The same day was
instructed to solicit donations in Europe,
was appointed to serve a
proselytizing mission. The other two
revelations directly involved ,
editor of the newspaper,
Times and Seasons. The revelation that Joseph Smith
dictated in December 1841 regarding also instructed
Robinson and his wife, , to take Hyde and her children into their home
while her husband, apostle , was away on a
mission to Europe and the Holy Land.
Then, in January 1842 Smith dictated a brief
revelation directing the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to
take over editorial control of the Times and
Seasons.
The apostles had voted to approach with the prospect of
buying his newspaper nearly two months earlier, in December 1841. Following the January 1842
revelation, Robinson agreed to sell the Times and
Seasons on condition that the church purchase not only
the newspaper but his entire printing and bookbinding business. The
sale was finalized in February, Joseph Smith making the purchase
through , who acted as his
in the transaction. Acquiring the church’s
official organ for communicating with its members—which, at the
time, was also the city’s sole newspaper—resulted in additional
responsibilities for Joseph Smith. Although apostles and
oversaw the day-to-day operation of the printing establishment,
Smith assumed editorship with the 1 March issue and continued in that
role through October. While Smith’s level of
involvement as editor of the paper fluctuated during his eight-month
tenure and was at times superficial, the paper bore his name and
implied endorsement. Consequently,
editorial selections from the issues for which he was editor are
reproduced in this and the next two volumes in the Documents series.
On the Joseph Smith Papers website, the complete issues are
reproduced.
A few of the editorials that Joseph Smith was involved in
authoring during this period are particularly noteworthy. In the
1 March 1842 issue of the
Times and Seasons, Smith published a narrative
account of the church’s history reportedly solicited by
Chicago Democrat editor . In
addition to providing an important description of Joseph Smith’s
first vision of Deity, this account, titled “Church
History,” included a section presenting thirteen statements of belief that
were later canonized as the church’s “Articles of Faith.” In the
same issue of the paper, Smith began publishing serial installments
of “The
Book of Abraham,” an account of the biblical patriarch
Abraham that Smith began dictating following the purchase of ancient
Egyptian papyri in 1835 (this text was also later canonized). A
representative sample of the text and an illustration from the
papyri published in the 15 March 1842 issue are reproduced
herein. Finally, the
1 April 1842 issue of the paper
included a lengthy article titled “Try the
Spirits”—warning church members against false prophets and
counterfeit gifts of the Spirit—which Joseph
Smith likely wrote, providing a rare example of his direct
involvement in authorship of editorial content.
Another event that added to Joseph Smith’s responsibilities was
the opening of his new . built the store—a two-story
brick structure in on Water
Street—in the second half of
1841. The shelves were all but
stocked in December, and on 5 January 1842 Smith opened the
store for business.
That evening, Smith wrote to his business associate that he had spent the day “behind the
counter dealing out goods as steady as any clerk you ever Saw to
oblige those who were compelled to go without their usual christmas
& New year, dinners. for the want of a little Sugar, Molasses,
Rasions &c.” Despite this
enthusiastic report, it appears that in general, Smith was less
directly involved in the store’s ongoing operation. The day before
the store opened, Smith entered into an agreement to lease it to . Regardless of Joseph
Smith’s level of interaction with managing the store, he retained
ownership of it, and it continued to bear his name.
In addition to supplying the community with mercantile
goods, the quickly became the center of civic and cultural
activity in the community. Joseph Smith
frequently addressed residents of
in the large upper room of the building, which was often referred to
as the “lodge room.” It was the location of the official
installation of Nauvoo’s Masonic lodge, as well as of the
organization of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo. The month of
March witnessed the creation of these
two major organizations. Though Joseph Smith did not initiate the
creation of either organization, he endorsed the formation of and
participated in both (but was much more directly involved in the
organization of the Relief Society). The previous year some
Freemasons in the community, including
, Mayor , and Joseph Smith’s
brother , had petitioned ’s Grand Lodge for the creation of a local lodge
in Nauvoo. Consequently, in October 1841 the Grand Master, , granted a dispensation to create a
temporary lodge in Nauvoo.
Five months later, Joseph Smith served as Grand Chaplain during the
formal installation of the lodge in Nauvoo, though he had never been
a Mason and was not technically one yet. However, he was initiated
into the fraternity later the same day and was raised as a Master
Mason the following day, on 16 March 1842. Though he was never as
involved in the lodge as his brother and other prominent Saints,
Smith attended lodge meetings periodically for the remainder of his
life.
Two days after the
lodge’s installation, Joseph Smith
presided at the organizational meeting of the Female Relief Society
of Nauvoo. Those in attendance with him were and and
twenty Nauvoo women, including Joseph Smith’s wife . Following a national trend in
the creation of women’s benevolence, temperance, and moral reform
societies, earlier in the month church member
had suggested organizing a women’s society in Nauvoo. A small group of women
met in Kimball’s home on the north end of the Nauvoo peninsula and
decided to draft a constitution articulating the proposed society’s
objectives and structure. Kimball reminisced decades later that when
the sisters presented the constitution to Joseph Smith, he
responded, “This is not what the sisters want, there is something
better for them. I have desired to organise the Sisters in the order
of the I now have the key by which I
can do it.”
Smith invited the women to meet on
17 March in the , where they officially organized the new society
dedicated to caring for the poor and strengthening the morals and
virtues of the community. was elected
as the society’s president. Although only women were members of the
society, Joseph Smith attended nine of the organization’s meetings
during 1842 and delivered sermons at six of
them. , secretary of the
society, took extensive minutes at the meetings, capturing Smith’s
instruction in greater detail than exists for most of his other
sermons. Snow’s complete minutes of the organizational meeting at which Smith presided, as
well as her notes on two of Smith’s later discourses to the society,
are featured herein.
The installation of the
lodge and the creation of the Relief Society two days later were
significant and related. Both organizations taught virtue and
required moral uprightness for membership. Freemasonry emphasized
the need to safeguard the sacred—a principle Joseph Smith repeatedly taught to
the Relief Society (even referring to the society’s members as
Masons on one occasion).
The Relief Society, in particular, offered Smith a venue for giving
instruction to trusted church members that would prepare the Saints
for the “” ceremony that he unfolded to a
small group of church members only weeks later, in early May
1842.
The formation of these organizations was an important step for the
doctrinal and cultural development of the ever-expanding
community.
’s growth,
however, came at a price to Joseph Smith
personally. Smith and the church were in considerable debt due to
the purchase of the land on which Nauvoo was built, the need to
provide homes and employment for massive groups of frequently
destitute incoming Saints, financial calamity in ,
and the Saints’ loss of property during their forced expulsion from
northern in 1838 and 1839. The
church had purchased roughly eighteen thousand acres of land in to
accommodate its growing numbers and had entered into agreements to
purchase nearly seven hundred acres across the in western ,
Illinois.
However, an 1835
statute limited the amount of real property a
religious society could own
to five acres. Joseph Smith, therefore, was named
personally on almost all of the church land at Nauvoo. Throughout
Smith’s years in Nauvoo, showing land to prospective buyers and
negotiating transfers occupied a significant portion of his time.
The months covered in this volume were no exception, and
representative samples of Smith’s property transactions are featured
herein. These land sales,
however, were frequently made on terms generous to the buyers and
were insufficient to alleviate Smith’s debts.
In August 1841 the Congress passed
an act that allowed voluntary bankruptcy for the first time in
American history. Many Americans were still suffering from the
nationwide depression that followed the economic panic of 1837 and were quick to seek relief through the benefits
of the new law.
When representatives from the ,
Illinois, law firm Ralston, Warren & Wheat advertised their
services in assisting
residents with application submissions, Joseph Smith and at least fourteen
other community leaders took advantage of their offer. Attorney came to Nauvoo
in mid-April and
worked with Smith and the others to file applications for
bankruptcy. Smith’s legally required notice of petition
was one of over 350 printed in a single issue of the capital’s Sangamo Journal.
Unlike his associates in Nauvoo, Smith was never successfully
discharged in bankruptcy, owing to the challenges of separating his
own assets and debts from those of the church.
Despite his attempt to secure the relief of bankruptcy, Joseph Smith made extensive efforts
to manage church finances, as the documents from these months
depict. One of Smith’s most frequent correspondents between December 1841 and
April 1842, at least in existing letters, was . Five of the
more than four dozen letters in this volume were either to or from
the land speculator—one of the men from whom
Smith and the church had purchased much of the land that became .
Because the failure of ’s state bank in February 1842 rendered notes from that
institution valueless, Smith wrote to Hotchkiss with offers to use
land as payment against the debt the church owed Hotchkiss and his
partners. Church leaders developed other creative
solutions for paying off debts, including trading lots in Nauvoo to
immigrating Saints for land they owned in the eastern , then selling
that land to pay creditors or transferring property to them
directly. The arrangement proved
effective in making payments on some of the debts owed to Hotchkiss
and others.
Others with whom Smith corresponded
frequently during these months were church members and . Hunter
was in the eastern conducting
business on Smith’s behalf, including purchasing provisions for the
, and Galland had been in the East as well, acting
as an for the church in settling debts in spring 1841. As was
typical during the years, some of
the other letters Joseph Smith received were reports from
missionaries serving throughout the United States and
Europe, such as those from , , and
. As leader of the
church, Smith also regularly received requests for instruction and
advice. For example, four of the documents herein are letters or
petitions from members of the church in and who sought Smith’s counsel on such topics as
dissension within their congregation, establishing additional of the church, and whether particular
missionaries should be assigned to the area. Joseph Smith even
received a petition from twenty-three residents of Pittsburgh who
were not members of the church requesting that apostle be allowed to return to
preach in the city.
As of the church, Smith also gave many public
discourses during the months covered in this volume. Partial
accounts of Smith’s sermons or discourses on eleven occasions between December 1841 and
April 1842 exist and are featured herein. During the cold
months of December and January,
Smith addressed
gathered Saints in his own home, but by March and April, as the weather
warmed, meetings moved to a large of trees on the hill near the
construction site.
At these sermons, Smith addressed the Saints on such varied topics
as the need for continuing revelation, the benefits and
dangers of the gift of tongues, and for the dead—a practice he had introduced only
the previous year.
Joseph Smith’s
activities become an overarching theme of this time period, their
sheer depth and breadth evidenced by letters, deeds, bonds, sermon
accounts, meeting minutes, marriage licenses, and newspaper
editorials. In these brief five months in 1841 and 1842, Joseph Smith remained in
, hardly
venturing outside the city. But it was a period of intense activity
as he helped found the Relief Society, took on new professional
responsibilities in editing a paper and managing a store, and
instructed church members near and far through discourses and
letters. The documents in this volume are vital to understanding
Joseph Smith’s life and the church’s growth and development during
this period.