Footnotes
Susa Young Gates, “Unpublished Letter of the Prophet Joseph,” Improvement Era, Dec. 1905, 167; see also Daniel Tyler, St. George, Utah Territory, to Wilford Woodruff, [Salt Lake City, Utah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 “An Unpublished Letter of the Prophet Joseph.”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.
Footnotes
Revelation, 9 Feb. 1831 [D&C 42:4, 8].
See Revelation, Feb. 1831–B [D&C 44:1].
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.
Pierce, Nathan. Docket Book, 1827–1832. Manchester, NY, Justice Records, 1827–1830. Microfilm 900, no. 62. BYU.
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’s letter is the first of three extant letters he sent from Missouri reporting on his mission to the Indians. (See Letter from Oliver Cowdery, 8 Apr. 1831; and Letter from Oliver Cowdery, 7 May 1831; see also Historical Introduction to Revelation, Sept. 1830–B [D&C 28].)
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.
Painesville Telegraph. Painesville, OH. 1822–1986.
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.
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].)
Painesville Telegraph. Painesville, OH. 1822–1986.
See Isaiah 54:3.
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.