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FAIR Answers—back to home page
1835 to 1838: Missouri | A FairMormon Analysis of Wikipedia: Mormonism and Wikipedia/Joseph Smith, Jr./1839 - 1844 A work by a collaboration of authors (Link to Wikipedia article here)
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An analysis of Wikipedia article "Joseph Smith, Jr." (Version 19 May 2009)
1838 - 1844: Nauvoo, Illinois
- | Wikipedia Main Article: Joseph Smith, Jr.–1838_-_1844:_Nauvoo,_Illinois | Wikipedia Footnotes: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Notes | A FAIR Opinion |
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1A |
In April 1839, Smith rejoined his followers who, having fled east from Missouri, had spread out along the banks of the Mississippi, near Quincy, Illinois. There, for both humanitarian and political reasons, the refugees had been welcomed. |
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2A |
Purchasing waterlogged wilderness land on credit from two Connecticut speculators (who drove a hard bargain during this period of economic recession), Smith established a new gathering place for the Saints along the Mississippi in Hancock County. |
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3A |
He renamed the area "Nauvoo", which he said meant "beautiful" in Hebrew. |
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4A |
The soggy low land and river eddies were exceptional breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and the Saints suffered plagues of malaria in the summers of 1839, 1840, and 1841. (In 1841 malaria killed Joseph's brother Don Carlos and his namesake, Joseph's son Don Carlos, within a few days of one another.) |
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5A |
Late in 1839, Smith went to Washington to seek redress from the federal government for the Saints' losses in Missouri. He met briefly with President Martin Van Buren, but neither man seems to have thought much of the other, and the trip produced no reparations. Whatever sympathy Van Buren or Congress might have had for Mormon victims was canceled out by the importance of Missouri in the upcoming presidential election. |
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6A |
Nevertheless, Smith shrewdly made Missouri a "byword for oppression" and "saw to it that the sufferings of his people received national publicity." |
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7A |
In a bold stroke, Smith sent off the Twelve Apostles to Great Britain to serve as missionaries for the new faith. All left families in desperate circumstances struggling to establish themselves in Iowa or Illinois. While Smith had been imprisoned, Brigham Young, the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, had with indefatigable skill, brought the believers out of Missouri, and the Saints "had obeyed him implicitly." |
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8A |
But with Young and the others in Europe, Smith recovered his earlier prestige and authority. Meanwhile, the missionaries found many willing converts in Great Britain, often factory workers, poor even by the standards of American saints. |
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9A |
These first trickled, then flooded, into Nauvoo, raising Smith's spirits. |
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10A |
In February 1841, Nauvoo received a charter from the state of Illinois, which granted the Latter Day Saints a considerable degree of autonomy. Smith threw himself enthusiastically into the work of building a new city. The charter authorized independent municipal courts, the establishment of a university, and the creation of a militia unit known as the "Nauvoo Legion." Smith dreamed of industrial projects, and even received a revelation commanding the building of a hotel, "that strangers may come from afar to lodge therein." |
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Doctrine
- | Wikipedia Main Article: Joseph Smith, Jr.–1838_-_1844:_Nauvoo,_Illinois | Wikipedia Footnotes: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Notes | A FAIR Opinion |
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1B |
While burdened with the temporal business of creating a city, Smith also elaborated on the cosmology of the new religion. According to Richard Bushman, Smith now moved from "a traditional Christian belief in God as pure spirit to a belief in His corporeality." |
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2B |
Smith saw that the joining of spirit and body that God provided to his children as the way to attaining a fullness of joy. |
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3B |
In other words, Smith declared that God had a body. Instead of affirming that there was an eternal God who had created matter, Smith taught that matter was eternal and that it was God who had developed through time and space. God only assembled the earth from preexisting materials and then had drawn on "a cohort of spirits from the pool of eternal intelligences to place upon it." |
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4B |
Another striking doctrine revealed to Smith after 1840 was baptism for the dead," an attempt to join "the generation of humanity from start to finish" by bringing "saving ordinances to the millions who had died without their benefits." |
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5B |
During the same period, Smith published the Book of Abraham, his "translation" of what later turned out to be an ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead that he had purchased from a traveling exhibitor in 1835. The Book of Abraham, canonized by the LDS Church after Smith's death, also emphasized the plurality of gods, pre-mortal existence, and the concept that the earth had been organized out of preexisting matter. |
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6B |
These doctrinal expansions culminated in a renewed effort to build another temple. Smith chose a site on a bluff in Nauvoo where he blessed the cornerstones in a public ceremony on April 6, 1841. In Kirtland, Smith had instituted rituals of washing and anointing, but in Nauvoo "the ceremonies were further elaborated to include baptism for the dead, endowments, and priesthood marriages." |
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7B |
As Bushman has written, Smith had "a green thumb for growing ideas from tiny seeds," and "portions of the temple ritual resembled Masonic rites that Joseph had observed when a Nauvoo lodge was organized in March 1842 and that he may have heard about from Hyrum, a Mason from New York days." |
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Plural marriage
Revealed to Smith
- | Wikipedia Main Article: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Revealed_to_Smith | Wikipedia Footnotes: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Notes | A FAIR Opinion |
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1C |
The early years in Nauvoo had been a time of comparative peace and economic prosperity, but by mid-1842, Smith was entangled in the conflicts that ended with his death two years later. |
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2C |
A year previous, Missouri courts had once again tried to extradite him on old charges that stemmed from the Mormon War. Although Stephen Douglas, then a member of the Illinois State Supreme Court, declared the writ of extradition void on a technicality, Smith "realized that popular opinion was turning against the Saints after two years of sympathy." Not surprisingly, Smith's praise for the Democrat Douglas first provoked opposition to the Mormons in a Whig newspaper, the Warsaw Signal, whose young editor, Thomas C. Sharp, Joseph then arrogantly and unwisely offended. |
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3C |
Although Joseph Smith probably married at least twenty-seven other women, |
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4C |
throughout her life, and even on her deathbed, Emma Smith denied that her husband had ever practiced polygamy. |
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5C |
Of all Smith's innovations during the years immediately preceding his death, the one that received the most hostile reception was his institution of plural marriage. In April 1841, Smith secretly wed Louisa Beaman as a plural wife, and during the next two and a half years, he may have married about thirty additional women, ten of them already married to other men. |
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6C |
About a third of Smith's plural wives were teenagers, including two fourteen-year-old girls. |
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7C |
Smith was "a charismatic, handsome man," and in Remini's words, he "seemed cheerful and gracious" to all. |
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8C |
Because many husbands and fathers knew about these plural marriages, Smith must have convinced them that "they and their families would benefit spiritually from a close tie to the Prophet." |
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9C |
Smith told one prospective wife that submitting to plural marriage would "ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father's household"; a father who gave his daughter in plural marriage was assured that the marriage would ensure "honor and immortality and eternal life to all your house both old and young." |
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10C |
Furthermore, once sealed for eternity by priesthood authority, Smith revealed that such couples would continue to procreate in the next life, becoming, in effect, gods. |
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11C |
As Bushman has written, Smith surely "must have realized that plural marriage would inflict terrible damage, that he ran the risk of wrecking his marriage and alienating his followers." And for those in the larger world, plural marriage "would confirm all their worst fears" about Mormonism. "Sexual excess was considered that all too common fruit of pretended revelation." |
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12C |
Although Emma believed in Joseph's prophetic calling, she was displeased with his multiple marriages, especially since five of the women lived in the Smith household when he married them. |
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13C |
Emma may have temporarily approved of Joseph's marriage to two sisters, Eliza and Emily Partridge, but even they were an "awkward selection" because Joseph had already married the sisters two months previous, and he had to go through another ceremony for Emma's benefit. |
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14C |
Nevertheless, "from that hour," Emily later wrote, "Emma was our bitter enemy," and they had to leave the household. |
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15C |
According to Smith's scribe, William Clayton, Joseph's brother Hyrum encouraged him to write down his revelation on plural marriage to present to Emma, and Joseph did so. |
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16C |
When Hyrum presented Emma with the revelation, she abused him. |
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17C |
Clayton reported that when Joseph reproved Emma for demanding from one plural wife a watch Joseph had given her, Joseph "had to use harsh measures to put a stop to [Emma's] abuse." |
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18C |
Throughout her life and on her deathbed, Emma Smith frequently denied that her husband had ever taken additional wives. |
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19C |
Even when her sons Joseph III and Alexander presented her with specific written questions about polygamy, she continued to deny that their father had been a polygamist. |
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Revealed to others
- | Wikipedia Main Article: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Revealed_to_other | Wikipedia Footnotes: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Notes | A FAIR Opinion |
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1D |
Although Smith's teachings about plural marriage were expressed in strict confidentiality and only to his leadership, the more men and women who participated, the more likely it became that these secret marriages would be revealed to the Nauvoo community and, of course, to the larger world. |
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2D |
By May 16, 1842, the New York Herald reported the rumor that "promiscuous intercourse" was being practiced in Nauvoo. |
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3D |
Yet Smith might have been able to talk down these reports along with other salacious gossip had it not been for his erstwhile second-in-command, John Cook Bennett. |
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4D |
Smith was not always a good judge of men, |
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5D |
and Bennett shortly became Smith's nemesis, although Smith had first predicted that Bennett was "calculated to be a great blessing to our community." |
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6D |
After deserting a wife and three children and arriving in Nauvoo in 1841, Bennett had been baptized into the new religion. |
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7D |
Emma never trusted him, but Joseph welcomed his assistance in acquiring the Nauvoo city charter. Soon Bennett became the first mayor of Nauvoo, “assistant president,” and Major General of the Nauvoo Legion. |
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8D |
The latter Bennett threatened to use in challenging Missouri for restitution of the Saints’ lost property, suggesting to skittish gentiles that Mormons intended to use force of arms to accomplish their objectives. |
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9D |
Unfortunately for Smith, Bennett also had an eye for women and made use of Smith’s new revelation to seduce the unwary, telling them that illicit sex was acceptable among the Saints so long as it was kept secret. |
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10D |
And Bennett ignored even perfunctory wedding ceremonies. |
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11D |
Smith was incensed at Bennett’s activities and forced Bennett’s resignation as Nauvoo mayor. In retaliation, Bennett remained in the area and wrote “lurid exposés of life in Nauvoo” that were first published in various newspapers and, later that year, compiled into a book. |
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12D |
Even contemporaries could hardly escape the conclusion that Bennett was, as Fawn Brodie has called him, “a base and ignoble opportunist.” But the Ostlings note that “there was just enough of a kernel of truth to arouse internal suspicion and whip up anti-Mormon sentiment elsewhere.” |
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13D |
Non-Mormons looked with increasing uneasiness not only at reports of Mormon “free wifery” but at the comparative success of Nauvoo, the competent drilling of the Nauvoo Legion, and the growing political clout of the Saints. |
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14D |
Furthermore, on May 6, 1842, an unknown assailant shot former governor of Missouri Lilburn Boggs three times in the head. |
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15D |
Bennett named a rough Mormon loyalist, Porter Rockwell, as the gunman. Mormons assumed Boggs would die and considered his assassination a fulfillment of prophecy. The Nauvoo Wasp indiscreetly gloated that the person who “did the noble deed remains to be found out." |
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16D |
Boggs refused to die, however, and when he recovered, he pressed Illinois governor Thomas Carlin to extradite Smith to Missouri. Smith once again went into hiding for some months until the U. S. Circuit Court in Springfield finally ruled that the extradition order was unconstitutional. |
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Political commitments
- | Wikipedia Main Article: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Political_commitments | Wikipedia Footnotes: Joseph Smith, Jr.–Notes | A FAIR Opinion |
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1E |
Nevertheless, Smith realized his current position was tenuous. Many citizens of Illinois were now determined to drive the Mormons out of the state. |
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2E |
In December 1843, Smith petitioned Congress for the right to make Nauvoo an independent federal territory with the right to call out federal troops in its defense. |
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3E |
Then, probably unwisely, Smith also decided to desert both Whigs and Democrats, and announce his own candidacy for President of the United States, sending out the apostles to advertise his campaign. |
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4E |
Meanwhile, he made plans to scout possible sites for a large Mormon settlement in Oregon or California. |
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5E |
In March 1844, Smith organized a secret Council of Fifty, a policy-making body based on what Smith called "Theodemocracy" |
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6E |
and which was in effect a shadow government. |
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7E |
One of the Council's first acts was to ordain Smith as King of the Kingdom of God. And, as if they had just organized an independent state, Smith and the Council sent ambassadors to England, France, Russia, and the Republic of Texas. |
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8E |
In April, Smith predicted "the entire overthrow of this nation in a few years." |
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References
Wikipedia references for "Joseph Smith, Jr." |
- Abanes, Richard, (2003), One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church Thunder's Mouth Press
- Allen, James B., The Significance of Joseph Smith's "First Vision" in Mormon Thought off-site .
- (1992), The Mormon Experience University of Illinois Press .
- (1980), The Lion and the Lady: Brigham Young and Emma Smith off-site .
- Bergera, Gary James (editor) (1989), Line Upon Line: Essays on Mormon Doctrine Signature Books .
- Bloom, Harold, (1992), The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation Simon & Schuster .
- Booth, Ezra, Mormonism—Nos. VIII–IX (Letters to the editor) off-site .
- Brodie, Fawn M., (1971), No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith Knopf .
- Brooke, , (1994), The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844 Cambridge University Press .
- Bushman, Richard Lyman, (2005), Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling , New York: Knopf .
- Clark, John A., (1842), Gleanings by the Way , Philadelphia: W.J. & J.K Simmon off-site .
- Compton, Todd, (1997), In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith Signature Books .
- Foster, Lawrence, (1981), Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community , New York: Oxford University Press .
- Harris, Martin, (1859), Mormonism—No. II off-site .
- Hill, Donna, (1977), Joseph Smith: The first Mormon , Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co. .
- Hill, Marvin S., (1976), Joseph Smith and the 1826 Trial: New Evidence and New Difficulties off-site .
- Hill, Marvin S., (1989), Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism Signature Books off-site .
- Howe, Eber Dudley, (1834), Mormonism Unvailed: Or, A Faithful Account of that Singular Imposition and Delusion, from its Rise to the Present Time , Painesville, Ohio: Telegraph Press off-site .
- Hullinger, Robert N., (1992), Joseph Smith's Response to Skepticism Signature Books off-site .
- Jessee, Dean, (1976), Joseph Knight's Recollection of Early Mormon History off-site .
- Lapham, [La]Fayette, (1870), Interview with the Father of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, Forty Years Ago. His Account of the Finding of the Sacred Plates off-site .
- Larson, Stan, (1978), The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text off-site .
- Mormon History off-site .
- Mack, Solomon, (1811), A Narraitve [sic] of the Life of Solomon Mack Windsor: Solomon Mack off-site .
- (1994), Inventing Mormonism Signature Books .
- Marquardt, H. Michael, (1999), The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text and Commentary Signature Books .
- Marquardt, H. Michael, (2005), The Rise of Mormonism: 1816–1844 Xulon Press .
- Matzko, John, (2007), The Encounter of the Young Joseph Smith with Presbyterianism off-site .
- Morgan, Dale, Walker, John Phillip (editor) (1986), Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism: Correspondence and a New History Signature Books off-site .
- (2008), Joseph Smith Jr.: reappraisals after two centuries Oxford University Press .
- Newell, Linda King, (1994), Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith University of Illinois Press .
- (1999), Mormon America: The Power and the Promise HarperSanFrancisco .
- Persuitte, David, (2000), Joseph Smith and the origins of the Book of Mormon McFarland & Co. .
- Phelps, W.W. (editor) (1833), A Book of Commandments, for the Government of the Church of Christ , Zion: William Wines Phelps & Co. off-site .
- Prince, Gregory A, (1995), Power From On High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood Signature Books .
- Quinn, D. Michael, (1994), The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power Signature Books .
- Quinn, D. Michael, (1998), Early Mormonism and the Magic World View Signature Books .
- Remini, , (2002), Joseph Smith: A Penguin Life Penguin Group .
- Roberts, B. H. (editor) (1902), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , Salt Lake City: Deseret News off-site .
- Roberts, B. H. (editor) (1904), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , Salt Lake City: Deseret News off-site .
- Roberts, B. H. (editor) (1905), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , Salt Lake City: Deseret News off-site .
- Roberts, B. H. (editor) (1909), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , Salt Lake City: Deseret News off-site .
- Shipps, Jan, (1985), Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition University of Illinois Press .
- Smith, George D., (1994), Nauvoo Roots of Mormon Polygamy, 1841–46: A Preliminary Demographic Report off-site .
- Smith, George D, (2008), Nauvoo Polygamy: "...but we called it celestial marriage" Signature Books .
- Smith, Joseph, Jr., (1830), The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon, Upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi , Palmyra, New York: E. B. Grandin off-site . See Book of Mormon.
- Smith, Joseph, Jr., Jessee, Dean C (editor) (1832), Personal Writings of Joseph Smith , Salt Lake City: Deseret Book .
- Jessee, Dean C (editor) (1839–1843), Personal Writings of Joseph Smith Deseret Book .
- (1835), Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of the Latter Day Saints: Carefully Selected from the Revelations of God , Kirtland, Ohio: F. G. Williams & Co off-site . See Doctrine and Covenants.
- Smith, Joseph, Jr., Church History [Wentworth Letter] off-site . See Wentworth letter.
- Smith, Lucy Mack, (1853), Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations , Liverpool: S.W. Richards off-site . See The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother
- Tucker, Pomeroy, (1867), Origin, Rise and Progress of Mormonism , New York: D. Appleton off-site .
- Turner, Orsamus, (1852), History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, and Morris' Reserve , Rochester, New York: William Alling off-site .
- Joseph Smith: The Gift of Seeing off-site .
- Van Wagoner, Richard S., (1992), Mormon Polygamy: A History Signature Books .
- Vogel, Dan, (1994), The Locations of Joseph Smith's Early Treasure Quests off-site .
- Vogel, Dan, (2004), Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet Signature Books .
- Widmer, Kurt, (2000), Mormonism and the Nature of God: A Theological Evolution, 1830–1915 McFarland .
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