Letter from Sidney Rigdon, 3 April 1840
-
Source Note
, Letter, [, NJ], to JS, [, Hancock Co., IL], 3 Apr. 1840. Featured version copied [between Apr. and June 1840] in JS Letterbook 2, pp. 125–127; handwriting of ; JS Collection, CHL. For more complete source information, see the source note for JS Letterbook 2.
-
Historical Introduction
On the morning of 3 April 1840, wrote a letter from to JS regarding Rigdon’s plans to return to the , Illinois, area. Throughout the delegation’s travels in the eastern , Rigdon had been afflicted with poor health. While the delegation waited for Congress to consider the church’s memorial, JS and visited church members in and throughout the Delaware River Valley, and Rigdon eventually joined them. Although JS and Higbee returned to at the end of January 1840, Rigdon remained ill after arriving in Philadelphia and was forced to stay there. According to Higbee, Rigdon finally left Philadelphia for New Jersey on 5 March. The dateline of this letter indicates that Rigdon composed it at the home of near Hornerstown, New Jersey, where he likely stayed.In the letter, relayed to JS information from a letter Rigdon had received from the previous day: that Congress had declined to further hear the church’s memorial for redress and reparations for the property the Saints lost in . Rigdon also described the financial assistance that Senator provided the church delegation, his own health and plans to return to , and rumors of recent misconduct in , Ohio, by former church leader .presumably sent the letter to JS by post. The original letter is not extant. The version featured here was copied into JS Letterbook 2 by sometime between the third week of April and June 1840.
Footnotes
-
1
Letter of Introduction from Sidney Rigdon, 9 Nov. 1839; Letter to Emma Smith, 9 Nov. 1839; Letter to Hyrum Smith and Nauvoo High Council, 5 Dec. 1839.
-
2
JS left Washington DC for Philadelphia on 21 December 1840. Rigdon arrived in Philadelphia around 14 January 1840. (Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 21 Dec. 1839, 70; 14 Jan. 1840, 2.)
-
3
Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 27 Jan. 1840, 2; Letter from Elias Higbee, 9 Mar. 1840; Fleming, “Early Mormonism in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey,” 78.
Fleming, Stephen J. “‘Sweeping Everything Before It’: Early Mormonism in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.” BYU Studies 40 (2001): 72–104.
-
4
Coray, Autobiographical Sketch, 17–19.
Coray, Howard. Autobiographical Sketch, after 1883. Howard Coray, Papers, ca. 1840–1941. Photocopy. CHL. MS 2043, fd. 1.
-
1
Cite this page
