JS, Letter, [, Hancock Co., IL], to , , Adams Co., IL, 11 Mar. 1840; unidentified handwriting; two pages; JS Collection, CHL. Includes address, postmark, and dockets.
Bifolium measuring 12¼ × 7⅝ inches (31 × 19 cm) when folded. The first two pages contain the body of the letter, and an address is written on the final page. The letter was trifolded in letter style for mailing. At a later time, it was folded twice horizontally and docketed for filing. apparently retained possession of the letter until it was filed with JS’s office sometime between 1842 and 1846. The document was cataloged in the JS Collection in 1973. The nineteenth-century docket and twentieth-century cataloging suggest continuous institutional custody.
Willard Richards, who became JS’s secretary in 1842, inscribed two dockets on the letter. On 4 February 1846, he finished boxing up papers and books belonging to JS and the church before migrating to the Salt Lake Valley, making it likely that Foster’s letter was filed sometime in that four-year period. (JS, Journal, 21 Dec. 1842; Richards, Journal, 4 Apr. 1846; JS History, vol. D-1, 1485.)
Johnson, Register of the Joseph Smith Collection, 8.
Johnson, Jeffery O. Register of the Joseph Smith Collection in the Church Archives, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City: Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1973.
Historical Introduction
On 11 March 1840, JS wrote a letter from the , Illinois, area to in , Illinois, in which he updated Foster on his activities since returning to Commerce from his four-month trip to the eastern . Foster, a physician who had recently joined the , was a late addition to the group that traveled with JS. In October 1839, JS, , , and stopped in , Illinois—approximately thirty miles from Foster’s home in Beverly—to attend to pressing business related to their plans to petition the federal government for redress and reparations. At that time, JS invited Foster to travel with the group and care for Rigdon, who was suffering from malaria. JS and Foster departed together for home from sometime in late January or early February 1840, leaving Higbee in the capital and a still-ailing Rigdon in .
In his letter, JS informed that he had visited his ill father, , and had delivered discourses in which he recounted the trip to the eastern . He also updated Foster on ’s growth and development, ’s efforts before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the general shift in church members’ political allegiances from Democratic to Whig, and the status of ’s health. Finally, he requested that Foster come to the Commerce area to visit him.
The letter was written in an unidentified hand. The notation of postage paid indicates the letter was mailed. apparently received it because it was given to , the church historian, within a few years. It is not known when Foster received the letter, if he wrote back, or if he visited JS.
The group left Quincy on 1 November 1839. According to Foster’s reminiscence written more than three decades later, Foster met JS, Rigdon, and Higbee when the group stopped near Quincy at Benjamin Wilber’s house in Kingston, Illinois, where Foster had been boarding and practicing medicine. (Historical Introduction to Recommendation from Quincy, IL, Branch, between 20 Oct. and 1 Nov. 1839; Robert D. Foster, “A Testimony of the Past,” True Latter Day Saints’ Herald, 15 Apr. 1875, 225.)
Letter of Introduction from Sidney Rigdon, 9 Nov. 1839. Recalling JS’s invitation more than three decades later, Foster wrote: “I was told by Joseph Smith, the Prophet, that if I was willing to obey the will of God and be obedient to his commandments, I must quit my practice and start the next day with them to the city of Washington, to aid them in their mission and minister to ElderSydney Rigdon, who was very sick at that time. So, in obedience to this mandate, I suddenly closed my practice, and started the next morning, in company with these gentlemen, to visit the chief magistrate of the Union at the federal city.” (Robert D. Foster, “A Testimony of the Past,” True Latter Day Saints’ Herald, 15 Apr. 1875, 225.)