Introduction to History, 1838–1856 (Manuscript History of the Church)
On
11 June 1839, while residing at
, Illinois,
JS enlisted the services of
as scribe and began dictating what his journal simply referred
to as his “history.” Mulholland had previously written for JS in
1838, and in April
1839 he began keeping JS’s earliest
Illinois
journal. The “history” JS now so modestly commenced eventually swelled to
six volumes and over 2,400 pages and came to be known as the “Manuscript
History of the Church” (in The Joseph Smith Papers it
bears the editorial title “History, 1838–1856”). Work on the task spanned the
settlement of
, the murder of JS and his
brother , and the Saints’ passage from Nauvoo to the
Salt Lake Valley. JS and a host
of others, including
,
,
,
,
, and at least ten clerks or
scribes, supported and sustained the project despite persistent adversity and
disruption.
JS
and others had previously endeavored to compile a history for the church, but
these efforts had for the most part fallen short or been abandoned.
Both and
had received record-keeping and history-keeping assignments in
the early days of the church. “The Book of John Whitmer” ultimately included copies of
dozens of revelations, letters, and other documents, interspersed with
historical narrative. However, Whitmer refused to turn this material over to
the church after his excommunication in 1838.
In
summer 1832,
JS and
drafted a six-page
account titled “A
History of the Life of Joseph Smith Jr.” However, JS completed only the
first two of the four sections he had anticipated.
began another attempt in 1834 that
was continued by Frederick G. Williams,
, and
. This
history,
covering the period from 1834 to early
1836, was a composite chronicle consisting of genealogical tables, dated
entries adapted from JS’s journal, and transcripts of newspaper articles.
Reasons for its discontinuance are unknown.
In
early 1838, after their
hurried flight from
,
Ohio, to
,
JS and
envisioned and began the creation of “a history of this church
from the earliest period to this date,” with
as scribe. Though the project
was not far advanced when the Missouri War erupted and no manuscript survives,
some of this material made its way into the early pages of the Manuscript
History.
In
the end it was to be the combination of
JS and
’s 1838 history initiated with
and JS’s ensuing collaboration
with that finally bore fruit. As the
project unfolded, there were frequent stops and starts—the longest, of over
seven years, induced by the Saints’ exodus from
followed by the challenges of
settling the
Salt Lake Valley. The project
eventually was brought to conclusion in Utah by
and
in 1856. All told, the story of the compiling of the
“Manuscript History of the Church” comprises a remarkable and compelling tale
of determination and perseverance in the face of daunting challenges.
While compiling
draft notes for the Manuscript History in 1845,
attributed the following
expression to
JS:
Since I have
been engaged in laying the foundation of the Church of Christ, I have been
prevented, in, various ways from keeping
continuing my Jou[r]nal & the History,
in a manner satisfactory to myself. or in justice to the cause, Long
imprisonments, vexatious and Long continued Lawsuits[,] The trea[c]hery of some of my clerks; & the deaths of
others; and the poverty of myself and brethers [brethren] from continued plunder & driving, has
prevented my handing down to posterity a connected memorandum of events,
desirable to all lovers of truth, Yet I have continued to keep up a
Jou[r]nal from time
to time in the best manner my circumstances would allow, and dictate for
my history from time to time, as I have had opportun[i]ty.
In truth,
substantial progress on the history was not made until December 1842 when
assumed responsibility for the
compilation and was appointed as
JS’s “private secretary and historian.” Prior to
Richards’s involvement, only 157 pages, carrying the narrative to
November 1831, had been written.
wrote fifty-nine pages prior to his untimely death on
3 November 1839. The following
October,
succeeded Mulholland as
scribe for JS and recorded all of sixteen pages before his death in
August 1841. (It was during Thompson’s tenure
that ,
, and a Dr. Miller were asked to edit and
revise the text; however, their efforts were not adopted.)
Next,
contributed seventy-seven
pages and carried the record forward to 1 November
1831. In March 1842, while Phelps was
serving as steward over the history, the church newspaper Times and
Seasons began serial publication of the text under the title “History of Joseph
Smith.” The church publication in England, the Millennial
Star, began republishing the “History” in June of that year.
When
assumed responsibility for the project, he
continued the narrative, often relying on material that was neither written nor
dictated by
JS. Apparently at JS’s behest, he and his
colleagues and successors chose to maintain the established first-person,
chronological narrative format, as if JS were the author throughout. In a
21 April 1856 letter from then-church historian
to
, secretary to the Twelve, the
process of compiling JS’s history was described in some detail:
The plan of
compiling the history of
Joseph
Smith from the Journals kept by his Clerks,
,
,
, and
, was commenced by himself, extracting items of necessary
information in regard to general and particular movements from the Times and
Seasons, Millennial Star, Wasp, Neighbor, and other publications, extracts from
city councils, Municipal Courts, and Mayor’s Dockets, and Legion Records, which
were all kept under his direction; also the movements of the church as found in
Conference Minutes, High Council records, and the records of the several
quorums, together with letters and copies preserved on file; also noted
remarkable occurrences throughout the world, and compiled them under date of
transaction, according to the above plan which he while in prison just previous
to his murder requested Elder Willard Richards to continue; which trust Elder
Richards fulfilled as far as he could while he lived.
According to
,
JS read and revised only forty-two pages of text
before his death. Afterwards,
Young,
,
, and others carried on the task
of reviewing and approving the work of the historians.
When
JS was killed in June
1844, the manuscript numbered 812 pages in two large, bound volumes
(subsequently designated
A-1 and
B-1). They
carried the narrative through 5 August 1838.
then paused work on the history until
11 December 1844 when, under the direction
of and the Quorum of the Twelve, he and
, assisted by
, resumed gathering and compiling the necessary records and
accounts. Beginning in early
1845 Richards began the practice of arranging draft notes while Bullock
composed and inscribed additional text in the second volume (B-1).
and his clerks worked on the history until
February 1846, when the records were boxed up
in preparation for the trek across the plains to the Rocky
Mountains. By that time they had compiled the history to
3 March 1843 (about halfway through the
fourth large manuscript volume, D-1, a total of 1,485 pages). A clerical note
by inserted in that volume on page 1485
reported that the volumes were packed away on 4
February 1846. Two boxes were sent west, one with the four volumes of
the original manuscript and a second with a duplicate copy, also in four
volumes—A-2, B-2, C-2, and D-2.
Apparently
oversaw the transit of the records as far
as Mt. Pisgah, Iowa. Henry
Fairbanks carried them to Winter Quarters,
Nebraska, and later, in 1848,
transported them the rest of the way to the
Salt Lake Valley. There they
remained in their boxes for five years until 7 June
1853 when they were unpacked by Willard Richards and Thomas Bullock.
resumed work on the history on
1 December 1853 but dictated only one line,
being too ill to continue. After Richards’s death on
11 March 1854,
JS’s cousin,
, was appointed historian. Though
Smith was eleven years younger than JS, they were very close. He had
participated in the Camp of Israel (Zion’s Camp) march as JS’s armor-bearer and
was ordained an apostle on 26 April 1839 at
, Missouri. He kept a careful journal and was reputed to have a
remarkable memory that was called upon as he worked on the history. George A.
Smith also worked with Willard Richards on the history while they were in
.
Beginning
13 April 1854,
commenced gathering material for the
history and by 1 July of that year he
and his scribes began inscribing new material into D-1. Over the next two years
he was assisted by Leo Hawkins,
Robert L. Campbell, and
Jonathan Grimshaw, who served as Historian’s
Office clerks recording text in volumes D-1, E-1, and F-1. In
April 1856, before the history’s completion,
Smith was called away from Utah on another assignment.
In his April 1856 letter to
, he summarized his efforts:
On the
10th of April 1854, I commenced to perform
the duties of Historian by taking up the History of
Joseph
Smith where Dr.
had left it when driven from
on the
4th day of February 1846. I had to revise
and compare two years of back history which he had compiled, filling up
numerous spaces which had been marked as omissions <on
memoranda> by Dr. Richards.
. . . I have
filled all the reports of sermons by Prestident
Joseph
Smith and others from minutes or sketches taken at the time in long hand
by Dr. ,
,
,
, Miss
&c. which was an immense labor, requiring the deepest thought
and the closest application, as there were mostly only two or three words
(about half written) to a sentence. The greatest care has been taken to convey
the ideas in the prophet’s style as near as possible.
After his
appointment as assistant church historian at the April
1856 general conference,
took up the remaining work on the
document. Woodruff, a fellow apostle and former missionary companion to
, kept meticulous journals that
were of considerable value in completing the history. At the time of Smith’s
departure the history had been drafted to the last days of
JS’s life. By August
1856 Woodruff carried the work to its conclusion, with the inscribing of
the text continuing until 6 November of that
year. George A. Smith commented that the Manuscript History had been reviewed
and revised by “the Council of the First Presidency almost without any
alteration.”
In its
published form as the “History of Joseph Smith,” the Manuscript History had
appeared serially in the Times and Seasons at
until
15 February 1846, the newspaper’s final
issue. At that time the account had been carried forward to
August 1834. In Utah in
November 1851 the Deseret News
continued the serialized publication, picking up the narrative where the
Times and Seasons had left off.
When it was
begun in 1838 and 1839, the Manuscript History and its published
adaptation, the “History of Joseph Smith,” appeared to be only the most recent
of several historical narratives set in motion by
JS. However, with its continued publication
stretching almost four years in
and many years thereafter in
and Utah, it
became the standard, official history of the church. The printed version,
however, is not as complete and accurate as the manuscripts. Even after
publication began in the Times and Seasons, revisions were made
in the manuscript instead of in a copy of the printed version, making the
manuscript volumes, rather than the serialized publication, the definitive
source.
The
republishing of the serialized history in a multivolume compilation was
contemplated at the dawn of the twentieth century. George Q.
Cannon, an established writer and publisher as well as a member of
the church’s First Presidency, had been commissioned to pursue the matter. At
the time of Cannon’s death in April 1901 a
modest attempt was under way. After Cannon’s passing, B. H.
Roberts, an established historian and president of the Seventy, was
appointed as editor of the project in May 1901,
a year before he was sustained as an assistant church historian.
Beginning in 1902, Roberts began the work of editing and
publishing the massive history in seven volumes as The History of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Period I. History of Joseph Smith, the
Prophet by Himself and The History of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints , Period II. From the Manuscript History of Brigham Young and
Other Original Documents. Roberts completed the task by 1912. He provided lengthy introductions to each volume and, though
relying on the earlier manuscripts and publications, revised the text in significant
ways. Although he maintained JS’s first-person voice, he made numerous silent
modifications without providing supporting annotation or rationale.
The digital
images and interim transcripts of the original manuscript available on this
website provide universal electronic access to this priceless document. At a
future date, the Joseph Smith Papers Project will offer an additional level of
textual verification as well as a fully annotated treatment. This will include
identification of the sources used in compiling the Manuscript History.
In addition, the Joseph Smith Papers website identifies page breaks
from Roberts’s seven-volume History of the Church in order to help
researchers trace back to more original sources. Specific History of the
Church pages can be found using the sliding page navigator located in the
document viewer or by searching within the document for “HC [volume]:[page].” See
also “Corresponding Dates
in Versions of the Manuscript History” to compare the different manuscripts
and publications of the history.
Overview of Volumes of the Manuscript
History
| Vol. No. | Period Covered | Page Nos. | History of the Church | Addenda |
| A-1 | 1805–Aug. 1834 | 1–553 | 1:1–2:161 | 16 pp. |
| B-1 | 1 Sept. 1834–2 Nov. 1838 | 553–849 | 2:161–3:195 | 10 pp. |
| C-1 | 2 Nov. 1838–31 July 1842 | 850–1361 | 3:195–3:402; 4:1–5:84 | 24 pp. |
| D-1 | 1 Aug. 1842–1 July 1843 | 1362–1636 | 5:84–5:473; 3:403–3:447 | 6 pp. |
| E-1 | 1 Jul. 1843–30 Apr. 1844 | 1637–2029 | 3:447–3:466; 5:473–6:349 | 11 pp. |
| F-1 | 1 May 1844–8 Aug. 1844 | 1–304 | 6:349–7:242 | 10 pp. |
-
1
For further treatment of this topic, see Joseph Smith’s Historical Enterprise and The Histories of Joseph Smith, 1832–1844.
-
2
For additional information, see Jessee, “Writing of Joseph Smith’s History,” 439–473.
Jessee, Dean C. “The Writing of Joseph Smith’s History.” BYU Studies 11 (Summer 1971): 439–473.
-
3
Historians Office, JS History, draft notes, 11 Dec. 1841.
Historian’s Office. Joseph Smith History Draft Notes, ca. 1839–1856. CHL. CR 100 92.
- 4
-
5
George A. Smith, Great Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to Wilford Woodruff, 21 April 1856, Historian’s Office, Historical Record Book, 218–221.
Historian’s Office. Historical Record Book, 1843–1874. CHL. MS 3434.
-
6
History of Brigham Young, vol. 13, p. 42, in Journal History of the Church, 1 Apr. 1845.
Historical Department. Journal History of the Church, 1896–. CHL. CR 100 137.
-
7
George A. Smith, Great Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to Wilford Woodruff, 21 April 1856, Historian’s Office, Historical Record Book, 218–221.
Historian’s Office. Historical Record Book, 1843–1874. CHL. MS 3434.
-
8
George A. Smith, Great Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to Wilford Woodruff, 21 April 1856, Historian’s Office, Historical Record Book, 218–221.
Historian’s Office. Historical Record Book, 1843–1874. CHL. MS 3434.