JS, Letter, , OH, to , , NY, 3–4 Mar. 1831; sent copy; handwriting of JS; three pages; JS Collection, CHL.
Two leaves of different sizes. First leaf measures 12⅞ × 7¾ inches (33 × 20 cm). Second leaf (wrapper) measures 10½–10⅞ × 7⅝–8 inches (27–28 × 19–20 cm). Bears remnant of wax seal used for mailing. Includes address in handwriting of JS and postal markings in handwriting of on wrapper. The original letter passed from ’s possession to ’s shortly after it was written. Following Knight’s death, the letter passed to his second wife, , and remained in her possession until around 1883, when it was given to Susa Young Gates, who retained the document as late as 1905. It is unknown when the letter was received in the Historian’s Office.
Susa Young Gates, “Unpublished Letter of the Prophet Joseph,” Improvement Era, Dec. 1905, 167; see also Daniel Tyler, St. George, Utah Territory, to Wilford Woodruff, [Salt Lake City, Utah Territory], 3 Mar. 1881, CHL.
Gates, Susa Young. “An Unpublished Letter of the Prophet Joseph.” Improvement Era 9, no. 2 (Dec. 1905): 167–169.
Tyler, Daniel. Letter, St. George, Utah Territory, to Wilford Woodruff, [Salt Lake City, Utah Territory], 3 Mar. 1881. CHL. MS 24628.
Historical Introduction
The first directive given in the 9 February 1831 “Laws of the Church” was for the men as to go two by two “in to the regions westward” to preach the gospel and build up the . Shortly thereafter, another revelation urged the elders to congregate in , Ohio, the area where church members, including JS, had begun gathering. The revelation directed that the elders should be contacted “by letter or some other way.” This letter, in which JS informed members of the of recent events and directed his brother to come to , was sent in response to that revelation.
JS sent the letter to , Broome County, New York. In late September 1830, following financial difficulties, and his family moved from their log house in to ’s house at , New York. Whether Hyrum ever lived in nearby Harpursville is unknown; Newel Knight’s house may have been closer to the Harpursville post office than to the Colesville post office.
JS included within his letter a copy of a letter from that described Cowdery’s efforts to preach to the American Indians west of . Cowdery wrote his letter soon after he and fellow missionaries arrived in western Missouri and crossed into what is now Kansas to preach among the Shawnee and Delaware Indians. Addressed to his “dearly beloved bretheren” in , the letter was Cowdery’s first communication to the newly baptized church members in since the missionaries’ departure in mid-November 1830. JS introduced Cowdery’s epistle by writing to , “We hav[e] recieved a leter from Olover dated Jackson County Missouri January the 29th 1831.” Though JS was in Kirtland when the letter was received, Cowdery did not know that JS would be one of the recipients. The revelations directing church members to gather to were dictated after the missionaries had departed, and Cowdery would have expected JS to be in . Cowdery’s letter demonstrates his concern for the recent converts in Ohio and suggests that those converts were also interested in hearing news of his mission to the Indians.
Knight, History, 183; Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845, 178–179. The location of Knight’s farm in Colesville Township is unknown. It is also not known why Hyrum Smith moved to Colesville. At the time, Levi Daggett, a resident of Palmyra, was attempting to collect a debt from him for shoeing horses. (Daggett v. Smith [J.P. Ct. 1830], Pierce, Docket Book, 77.)
Knight, Newel. History. Private possession. Copy in CHL. MS 19156.
In March 1831, the post offices in Colesville and Harpursville were only four miles apart. Alternatively, Hyrum Smith could have been staying at the home of Emma Smith’s sister Elizabeth Hale Wasson, who lived in Harpursville until 1836. In early July 1830, JS took refuge from hostile Colesville residents at her house. (Table of the Post Offices in the United States, 44; Recollections of the Pioneers of Lee County, 57; History of Lee County, 851; see also 1825 New York Census, Colesville, Broome Co., NY, [8], microfilm 806,800, U.S. and Canada Record Collection, FHL; 1830 U.S. Census, Colesville Township, Broome Co., NY, 44; and JS History, vol. A-1, 47.)
Table of the Post Offices in the United States, Arranged by States and Counties; as They Were October 1, 1830; with a Supplement, Stating the Offices Established between the 1st October, 1830, and the First of April, 1831. Washington DC: Duff Green, 1831.
Recollections of the Pioneers of Lee County. Dixon, IL: Inez A. Kennedy, 1893.
History of Lee County, Together with Biographical Matter, Statistics, Etc., Gathered from Old Settlers, County, Township and Other Records, and Extracts from Files of Papers, Pamphlets, and Such Other Sources as Have Been Available. Chicago: H. H. Hill, 1881.
U.S. and Canada Record Collection. FHL.
Census (U.S.) / U.S. Bureau of the Census. Population Schedules. Microfilm. FHL.
Cowdery and his fellow missionaries likely left Kirtland no later than 22 November 1830. Cowdery wrote that the group arrived in Kirtland on 29 October 1830, and Parley P. Pratt later wrote that the group preached in Kirtland “two or three weeks.” Pratt also recounted being arrested and standing trial near Amherst, Ohio—fifty miles from Kirtland—several days after they left Kirtland. These events were mentioned in a newspaper article dated 26 November 1830. (Letter from Oliver Cowdery, 12 Nov. 1830; Pratt, Autobiography, 50–53; “Beware of Impostors,” Painesville [OH] Telegraph, 14 Dec. 1830, [2].)
Pratt, Parley P. The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Embracing His Life, Ministry and Travels, with Extracts, in Prose and Verse, from His Miscellaneous Writings. Edited by Parley P. Pratt Jr. New York: Russell Brothers, 1874.
Revelation, 30 Dec. 1830 [D&C 37:3]; Revelation, 2 Jan. 1831 [D&C 38:32]; Pratt, Autobiography, 49–51. Other evidence supports the possibility that the participants in the mission to the Lamanites did not know JS had already moved to Kirtland or that church members in New York were in the process of moving to Ohio. A 14 February 1831 letter from Cowdery to superintendent of Indian affairs William Clark indicates that Cowdery believed the church to be headquartered in New York. Pratt, who left Missouri in mid-February on a journey to the East, later recorded that upon his arrival in Kirtland in spring 1831, “the news was that the whole Church in the State of New York . . . was about to remove to Ohio.” (Oliver Cowdery, Independence, MO, to William Clark, [St. Louis, MO], 14 Feb. 1831, U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, Central Superintendency, Records, vol. 6, p. 103; Pratt, Autobiography, 64–65.)
Pratt, Parley P. The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Embracing His Life, Ministry and Travels, with Extracts, in Prose and Verse, from His Miscellaneous Writings. Edited by Parley P. Pratt Jr. New York: Russell Brothers, 1874.
U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, Central Superintendency. Records, 1807–1855. Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. Also available at kansasmemory.org.
Page [1]
Geauga County Ohio
March 3th 1831
we arived here safe and are all well I hav[e]been ingageed in regulating the here as the deciples are numerous and the devil had made many attempts to over throw them it has been a Serious job but the Lord is with us and we have overcome and have all things regularthe work is brakeing forth on the <right> hand and on the left and there is a great Call for in this place we hav[e] recieved a leter from dated Jackson County Missouri January the 29th 1831 these are the words which he has written saying—
My dealy dearly beloved bretheren after a considerable lengthy journy I arived avail myself of the first opertunity of communicating to you a knowledge of our situation that you may be priviledged of writing to us for we have not heard any thing from you since we left you last fall we arived here at this place a few days since which is about 25 miles from this the Shawney indians on the south Side of the at its mouth & delewares on the northI have had two interviews with the Chief of thatthat the delewares who is <a> very old & venerable looking man after haveing laying before him & eighteen of or twenty of the Council of that nation the truth he said that <hehe> and they he and thy they were very glad for what I their Brother had told them and they had recived it in their hearts &c— But how the matter will go with this tribe to me is uncirtain nether Can I at present Conclude mutch about it the wether is mtchis quite Severe and the snow is Considerable deep which makes it at present quite dificcult traveling about I have but a short time to write to you my b[e]loved Bretheren as the mail leves thi[s] place in the morning [p. [1]]
Figures vary, but there may have been several hundred converts by this time. (See Porter, Study of the Origins, 114–115; and Backman, Heavens Resound, 51.)
Porter, Larry C. A Study of the Origins of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the States of New York and Pennsylvania, 1816–1831. Dissertations in Latter-day Saint History. Provo, UT: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History; BYU Studies, 2000.
Backman, Milton V., Jr. The Heavens Resound: A History of the Latter-day Saints in Ohio, 1830–1838. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1983.
Regarding the church’s situation at Kirtland, JS recalled in his later history that “some strange notions and false spirits had crept in among them.” Matthew S. Clapp, who had been a member of Sidney Rigdon’s Mentor, Ohio, congregation, criticized those who converted to Mormonism, claiming that “a scene of the wildest enthusiasm was exhibited. . . . Sometimes, in these exercises, the young men would rise and play before the people, going through all the Indian manoeuvres of knocking down, scalping, ripping open, and taking out the bowels. . . . At other times they are taken with a fit of jabbering that . . . they call speaking foreign languages by divine inspiration.” (JS History, vol. A-1, 93; [Matthew S. Clapp], “Mormonism,” Painesville [OH] Telegraph, 15 Feb. 1831, [1]; see also Historical Introduction to Revelation, Feb. 1831–A [D&C 43].)
According to Parley P. Pratt, Cowdery and his fellow missionaries traveled fifteen hundred miles from New York to Missouri, the last part of which was on foot in early January, “through trackless wilds of snow.” (Pratt, Autobiography, 54–55.)
Pratt, Parley P. The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Embracing His Life, Ministry and Travels, with Extracts, in Prose and Verse, from His Miscellaneous Writings. Edited by Parley P. Pratt Jr. New York: Russell Brothers, 1874.
Peter Whitmer Jr. later reported that the missionaries arrived in Independence on 13 December 1830, more than six weeks before Cowdery wrote this letter, but he was likely mistaken about the date. (Whitmer, Journal, Dec. 1831, [1].)
Whitmer, Peter, Jr. Journal, Dec. 1831. CHL. MS 5873.
In the aftermath of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, “Old Northwest” Indian tribes such as the Delaware and Shawnee were resettled by the United States government in the newly created Indian Territory, in what is now eastern Kansas. (See Prucha, Great Father, 243–248.)
Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. 2 vols. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
The leading Delaware chief at this time was Kikthawenund (also named William Anderson). He was a Delaware leader for more than a decade and had negotiated his people’s removal to the new agency in Indian Territory, arriving with his people there only months before Cowdery’s visit. Parley P. Pratt later reconstructed the missionaries’ interviews with the Delaware, including Cowdery’s explanation of the Book of Mormon to the assembled council. (Weslager, Delaware Indian Westward Migration, 209–219; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 360–371; Pratt, Autobiography, 56–60.)
Weslager, C. A. The Delaware Indian Westward Migration: With the Texts of Two Manuscripts (1821– 22) Responding to General Lewis Cass’s Inquiries about Lenape Culture and Language. Wallingford, PA: Middle Atlantic, 1978.
Weslager, C. A. The Delaware Indians: A History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1972.
Pratt, Parley P. The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Embracing His Life, Ministry and Travels, with Extracts, in Prose and Verse, from His Miscellaneous Writings. Edited by Parley P. Pratt Jr. New York: Russell Brothers, 1874.
Two months later, Cowdery wrote that the blacksmith who did work for the Delaware reported that “the principle chief says he believes evry word of the Book & there are many more in the Nation who believe and we understand there are many among the Shawnees who also believe.” (Letter from Oliver Cowdery, 8 Apr. 1831.)
The winter of 1831 was marked by extraordinary snowfall. (See Atkinson, “Winter of the Deep Snow,” 48–50.)
Atkinson, Eleanor. “The Winter of the Deep Snow.” In Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1909: Tenth Annual Meeting of the Society, Springfield, Ill., May 13, 14, 1909, 47–62. Springfield, IL: Illinois State Historical Library, 1910.