Footnotes
The only copy of this revelation (in Revelation Book 1) is simply dated 1830 and placed between two April 1830 revelations. David Whitmer’s later account helps narrow the dating: he reportedly recalled that the revelation was dictated in January 1830 and that Cowdery and Page crossed Lake Ontario on the ice to reach Kingston, which only would have been possible that winter between January and early March. This window of time also coincides with a period when E. B. Grandin’s printshop used the original Book of Mormon manuscript, rather than the printer’s manuscript, for a portion of the typesetting from Helaman to the third book of Nephi. It is probable that Cowdery, scribe for the printer’s manuscript, was in Canada with the manuscript. (Traughber, “False Prophecies,” 1; Skousen, “Translating and Printing the Book of Mormon,” 107–109.)
Traughber, John L. “False Prophecies.” In John L. Traughber, Papers, 1854–1910. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Skousen, Royal. “Translating and Printing the Book of Mormon.” In Oliver Cowdery: Scribe, Elder, Witness, edited by John W. Welch and Larry E. Morris, 75–76. Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University, 2006.
“The First Book of Nephi,” Reflector (Palmyra, NY), 2 Jan. 1830, 9; Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845, bk. 9, [9]–[10]; see also Historical Introduction to Letter from Oliver Cowdery, 28 Dec. 1829.
Reflector. Palmyra, NY. 1821–1831.
Martin Harris to Egbert B. Grandin, Indenture, Wayne Co., NY, 25 Aug. 1829, Wayne Co., NY, Mortgage Records, vol. 3, pp. 325–326, microfilm 479,556, U.S. and Canada Record Collection, FHL.
U.S. and Canada Record Collection. FHL.
Hiram Page, Fishing River, MO, to William E. McLellin, 2 Feb. 1848, typescript, Letters and Documents Copied from Originals in the Office of the Church Historian, Reorganized Church, CHL; see also Whitmer, Address to All Believers in Christ, 30–31.
Letters and Documents Copied from Originals in the Office of the Church Historian, Reorganized Church, no date. Typescript. CHL. MS 9090. Original at CCLA.
Whitmer, David. An Address to All Believers in Christ. Richmond, MO: By the author, 1887.
Whitmer, Address to All Believers in Christ, 31.
Whitmer, David. An Address to All Believers in Christ. Richmond, MO: By the author, 1887.
H. Page to W. McLellin, 2 Feb. 1848.
Letters and Documents Copied from Originals in the Office of the Church Historian, Reorganized Church, no date. Typescript. CHL. MS 9090. Original at CCLA.
British copyright law, under the 1709 Statute of Anne, provided copyright protection for British subjects, including those in Canada, only if a copy of the work was physically registered with Stationers Hall in London, a difficult proposition for most Canadian authors.a From 1814 to 1835 no author or printer registered any books from the Canadian provinces; even if one had, registration would have offered little or no protection in North America because of the lack of enforcement.b Lower Canada created copyright laws in 1832, but the laws could not be enforced until 1841, when provincial legislatures enacted local statutes.c Therefore, the only copyright that was available in Canada to JS and his agents was under British common law. Nonetheless, since this revelation explained that they should obtain the copyright “upon all the face of the Earth,” a copyright could have been obtained if JS’s agents had journeyed to York and there enlisted a British subject to register the copyright in London. This was an uncommon practice, however, and would not have given them protection in Canada. They also had the right to make legal agreements with individual printers in various locations to publish the Book of Mormon and the right to distribute the profits according to those agreements.
(aAn Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of Such Copies, during the Times Therein Mentioned [10 Apr. 1710], Statutes at Large, vol. 4, chap. 19, p. 418, sec. 2. bFleming et al., History of the Book in Canada, 352; Ehat, “‘Securing’ the Prophet’s Copyright in the Book of Mormon,” 38–52. cSee Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 5:260n11; Fleming et al., History of the Book in Canada, 352, 457n35; An Act for the Protection of Copy Rights in This Province, [18 Sept. 1841], Provincial Statutes of Canada, chap. 61, pp. 323–327; and An Act for the Protection of Copy Rights, [25 Feb. 1832], Provincial Stautes of Lower-Canada, chap. 53, pp. 624–625.)The Statutes at Large. . . . 9 vols. Edited by Owen Ruffhead. London: Mark Basket, and Henry Woodfall and William Strahan, 1763–1765.
Fleming, Patricia Lockhart, Gilles Gallichan, and Yvan Lamonde, eds. History of the Book in Canada. Vol. 1, Beginnings to 1840. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Ehat, Stephen Kent. “‘Securing’ the Prophet’s Copyright in the Book of Mormon: Historical and Legal Context for the So-Called Canadian Copyright Revelation.” BYU Studies 50, no. 2 (2011): 4–70.
Vogel, Dan, ed. Early Mormon Documents. 5 vols. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996–2003.
Provincial Statutes of Canada . . . At the Parliament Begun and Holden at Westminster, on the Fifteenth Day of November, Anno Domini 1837, in the First Year of the Reign of Our Sovereign Lady Victoria . . . . Kingston, Upper Canada: Stewart Derbishire and George Desbarats, 1841.
The Provincial Statutes of Lower-Canada, Enacted by His Most Excellent Majesty, Our Sovereign Lord William, the Fourth. . . . Quebec, Lower Canada: John Charlton Fisher and William Kemble, 1831.
H. Page to W. McLellin, 2 Feb. 1848.
Letters and Documents Copied from Originals in the Office of the Church Historian, Reorganized Church, no date. Typescript. CHL. MS 9090. Original at CCLA.
Traughber, “False Prophecies,” 1–2; Whitmer, Address to All Believers in Christ, 31. The extant minutes of the 1 November 1831 conference do not contain any discussion of this revelation. (See Minute Book 2, 1–2 Nov. 1831.)
Traughber, John L. “False Prophecies.” In John L. Traughber, Papers, 1854–1910. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Whitmer, David. An Address to All Believers in Christ. Richmond, MO: By the author, 1887.
Whitmer, Address to All Believers in Christ, 31; see also Traughber, “False Prophecies,” 2.
Whitmer, David. An Address to All Believers in Christ. Richmond, MO: By the author, 1887.
Traughber, John L. “False Prophecies.” In John L. Traughber, Papers, 1854–1910. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
H. Page to W. McLellin, 2 Feb. 1848. Page’s letter to McLellin offered this comment on his and Cowdery’s trip to Kingston: “But when we got there, there was no purchaser neither were they authorized at Kingston to buy rights for the provence; but little York was the place where such buisaness had to be done, we were to get 8,000 dollars[.] we were treated with the best of respects by all we met with in Kingston—by the above we may learn how a revlation may be received and the person receving it not be benafited.”
Letters and Documents Copied from Originals in the Office of the Church Historian, Reorganized Church, no date. Typescript. CHL. MS 9090. Original at CCLA.
Sidney Rigdon apparently edited this copy of the revelation for subsequent use, primarily by crossing out the passages of the revelation that referred to selling the copyright and by adding an “amen” immediately preceding the section to be deleted. An unidentified person also marked “to Kingston” for deletion. These redactions most likely occurred during preparations for publication in 1832–1833. (Revelation Book 1, pp. 30–31.)
A previous revelation offered similar encouragement, promising, “Fear not little flock, do good, let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my Rock, they cannot prevail.” (Revelation, Apr. 1829–A [D&C 6:34].)
See Revelation, 6 Apr. 1830 [D&C 21:9].
TEXT: Opening and closing parentheses possibly inserted at a later time.
Martin Harris. Although this was crossed out at the time of original inscription by John Whitmer, it is possible he was faithfully copying text crossed out in the manuscript he was copying from.
Kingston, at that time the most populous town of Upper Canada, may have been a likely place to find a buyer. H. Pearson Gundy, a historian of early Canadian publishing, notes that Kingston was a major center in early nineteenth-century Canada for the editing, publishing, and selling of books—and that in each of these areas Kingston “assumed preeminence over other centres in Upper Canada” until it was overtaken by Toronto in the late 1830s. (Gundy, “Publishing and Bookselling in Kingston since 1810,” 22; see also Fleming et al., History of the Book in Canada, 90–91.)
Gundy, H. Pearson. “Publishing and Bookselling in Kingston since 1810.” Historic Kingston 10 (1962): 22–36.
Fleming, Patricia Lockhart, Gilles Gallichan, and Yvan Lamonde, eds. History of the Book in Canada. Vol. 1, Beginnings to 1840. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
The “four Provinces” likely referred to Upper Canada (now Ontario), Lower Canada (now Quebec), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, the four provinces that combined in 1867 to form the Dominion of Canada.