Following the climactic events they experienced in the House of the Lord in spring 1836, JS and church members renewed their efforts on three fronts: proselytizing, raising funds to purchase land in Missouri on which to settle increasing numbers of Latter-day Saints, and building a larger and stronger Latter-day Saint community in Kirtland, Ohio. But in neither Missouri nor Ohio did events unfold as expected. Success in gathering converts to Missouri provoked renewed external opposition, again forcing church members in that state to relocate. Meanwhile, conflicts engulfed JS in Kirtland.

Revelations directed Latter-day Saint elders to proselytize throughout the world after being empowered in the House of the Lord. A modest beginning during the remainder of 1836 crescendoed the following year with missionary service throughout the United States and Canada and the successful launching of a ministry in England. Their mission was not only to preach and make converts but also to gather the descendants of the biblical house of Israel, now scattered throughout the world. Converts were encouraged to move to designated locations in Missouri and Ohio. The Mormon quest to establish Zion in Missouri, temporarily abandoned after the Saints’ expulsion from Jackson County, was thereby reinvigorated.

Beginning in April 1836, JS and his associates engaged in an aggressive fund-raising campaign for land purchases in Missouri.3 Meanwhile, converts flocked to Clay County, Missouri, to join the Latter-day Saints who had been expelled from Jackson County in 1833. The rapid growth of the Mormon population eroded the tolerance of other Clay County residents, who concluded in late June 1836 that the Saints must leave. By then threats of violence and the intimidation of incoming Mormons made the once welcoming community much less so.4 Returning to Jackson County was also an unrealistic option.

Attempting to prevent future hostilities—and probably to divert Mormon immigration away from more coveted lands—on 29 December 1836, the Missouri legislature created Caldwell County, northeast of Clay County, exclusively for Mormon settlement.5 That act gave rise to conflicting expectations. Many Missourians believed the Latter-day Saints were thereafter to confine their settlement to Caldwell County.6 The Saints willingly left Clay County and established headquarters at Far West in Caldwell County, but they made no formal commitment to limit their settlement to one county. Indeed, they anticipated establishing numerous additional stakes of Zion elsewhere in northwestern Missouri. Tension over future Mormon expansion was inherent in the arrangement.

Conflict also increased at church headquarters in Kirtland. In seeking to establish a sacral society directed by prophetic leadership, JS crossed conventional boundaries between religious and secular affairs. For him, God’s commandments made no distinction between the spiritual and the temporal.7 Subjecting oneself to a religious leader’s direction in temporal matters clashed with American ideals of unfettered individual freedom. As the Mormon population of Kirtland continued to grow, JS and his associates conceived expansive plans for that community. A pivotal element was a bank, which could help provide capital for development. Though they were unable to obtain a state charter—an ultimately fatal flaw—they nevertheless established a financial institution in January 1837. The “Kirtland Safety Society” faltered early, due in part to negative publicity, the refusal of many area banks to accept Safety Society notes, and the predatory actions of outsiders who systematically acquired its notes and quickly demanded payment in specie, thus depleting its reserves. The Safety Society suspended such payments in late January, then failed several months later during the recession that gripped the United States.8 Stresses related to the bank failure, mounting personal debt of Kirtland Mormons, and church indebtedness due to construction of the House of the Lord caused some to question the scope and legitimacy of JS’s prophetic leadership. Some of JS’s closest associates became disaffected. Prominent among the dissenters were JS’s former secretary Warren Parrish, several apostles, a number of the members of the Quorum of the Seventy, and the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon plates. Their discontent escalated from dismay with JS’s financial leadership to rejection of his religious leadership.9

Such views eventually spread to nearly one-third of the church’s general leadership and over ten percent of the local church membership in Ohio. Declaring JS a fallen prophet, Parrish and others attempted to establish a church of their own and to take control of the House of the Lord.10 Oliver Cowdery, saddled with crushing personal financial losses, privately disparaged JS.11 Some dissidents sought to replace JS with David Whitmer as church president.12 Frederick G. Williams clashed with JS over the Safety Society.13 Compounding JS’s problems was the antipathy of numerous non-Mormon residents of Kirtland and vicinity, some of whom used both the legal system and threats of violence to harass him and other Latter-day Saints.14

In fall 1837, JS moved vigorously to reassert his authority as church president. At a conference in September, he and church leaders loyal to him disciplined dissidents in Ohio—including three apostles and a number of members of the Kirtland high council. Meanwhile, problems developed among church leaders in Missouri, where the high council, the bishopric, and apostles Thomas B. Marsh and David W. Patten decried unilateral actions by the Missouri presidency. Concern focused particularly on the management by counselors John Whitmer and William W. Phelps of the proceeds from the sale of property in Far West.15 When Marsh traveled to Kirtland in summer 1837, he probably informed JS of these Missouri leadership issues. To underscore the importance of unity and to prepare the way for changes in Missouri leadership if they should be required, JS sent minutes of the September Kirtland conference to Missouri, along with a revelation, additional written counsel, and verbal instructions conveyed by Marsh and JS’s brother Hyrum Smith, an assistant counselor in the presidency. Soon after, JS and his loyal first counselor, Sidney Rigdon, traveled to Caldwell County, Missouri, where with Hyrum Smith they met with local church leaders in early November and reached what seemed to be a satisfactory resolution of most of the outstanding issues. At a conference the following day, the local presidency were retained after they made confessions in response to objections raised against them. However, the First Presidency underwent major changes. Frederick G. Williams, JS’s second counselor, was removed from office after considerable discussion and replaced with Hyrum Smith. The name of Oliver Cowdery, who earlier was placed next to JS in the presidency, was not even presented for approval on this occasion; thus he was silently displaced.16 After JS’s return to Kirtland, it became evident that unresolved issues in Missouri required further attention.

An 1831 revelation had signaled that Kirtland would eventually yield to Missouri as the major gathering center for the Latter-day Saints.17 When arrangements were completed in late 1836 for Mormon settlement in Caldwell County, renewed large-scale migration of Mormons to Missouri became feasible. JS and the presidency had anticipated moving there earlier in 1836 to direct the resettlement of incoming converts, but the delay in establishing a permanent Missouri location and the entanglements of Kirtland kept them in Ohio. By late 1837, JS was planning to move as soon as possible.18 Threatened by dissidents and pursued by creditors, he learned in January 1838 of his impending arrest on a charge of illegal banking—quite likely a ruse devised by his opponents to drive him from Ohio.19 JS and Rigdon had already been found guilty of such a charge in October 1837, had been fined $1,000 each, and had an appeal pending.20 On 12 January, a new revelation directed that JS and the presidency were to terminate their work in Kirtland “as soon as it is practicable” and move to Missouri.21 JS and Rigdon left within a few hours and were joined soon afterward by their families.

While JS was en route to Far West, his supporters there were working to root out dissent among local church leadership. Senior apostle Thomas B. Marsh and members of the Missouri high council conducted, in each of five settlements, meetings of church members in which the conduct of the Missouri presidency was reviewed. Marsh indicated that the meetings were conducted according to instructions from JS. The outcome of each meeting was that the leadership of the presidency—consisting of David Whitmer, William W. Phelps, and John Whitmer—was rejected. The Missouri high council and bishopric replaced the presidency with an interim presidency of Marsh and apostle David W. Patten, and soon afterward the high council excommunicated Phelps and John Whitmer.22 The reassertion of authority in Missouri under JS and those loyal to him was well under way when JS reached Far West on 14 March 1838.

George W. Robinson, who was appointed the church’s general clerk and recorder in Ohio in September 1837, arrived in Far West on 28 March 1838, two weeks after JS, and was immediately pressed into service. Within a day or two of arriving, he began writing what would become the present journal. Robinson made his initial inscriptions in a general church record book that already included a roster of Latter-day Saints living in Caldwell County. He began writing on the first blank page following the previously inscribed roster. The journal Robinson kept for JS documents critical developments in the struggle of JS and the presidency to maintain leadership of the church and to fulfill ambitious plans for Zion in Missouri. It records their efforts to found settlements outside their headquarters and gathering center in Caldwell County during spring and summer 1838, as well as the first signs of the deterioration of that effort. The journal is primarily a documentary record. Several key developments are depicted only by documents copied into the record without narrative ligatures.

The journal entries only occasionally provide insights into intentions, perceptions, evaluations, and feelings. When they do so, Robinson’s perspective is usually represented. In the journal entries, Robinson refers to JS in the third person and to himself in the first. Thus references to “I” or “myself” in the journal entries usually indicate Robinson rather than JS.

The journal opens with a brief retrospective account, apparently dictated by JS, of his arrival in Far West on 14 March 1838. Then follows a copy of a motto recently composed by JS and signed by JS, Robinson, and a half-dozen prominent Latter-day Saints. The motto reflected JS’s experiences with dissent and persecution in Kirtland and signaled his determination to vigorously assert the Latter-day Saints’ right to establish themselves in Missouri and to pursue their goals without harassment. JS’s letter of 29 March 1838, copied on pages 23–26 of the journal, indicates that the motto was already inscribed in the journal by that date.

Following the motto are two sets of questions and answers about the book of Isaiah. A series of transcripts or summaries of eight documents follows. These materials relate to a seven-month series of events that culminated in the 12–13 April 1838 excommunications of Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer. As indicated by the date on the title page of the journal, 12 April 1838, Robinson apparently began transcribing these documents and entries on the same day that Cowdery was excommunicated. Cowdery’s trial seems to have been the motivating factor for transcribing this set of documents and creating an ongoing record with its own identity. These documents include minutes, instructions, and revelations originally written in Ohio as early as 3 September 1837; minutes of a conference in which Brigham Young joined Thomas B. Marsh and David W. Patten as “Presidents Pro. Tem” of the church in Missouri; and terse synopses of the excommunication proceedings. In stark contrast to the frank evaluations of key leaders that JS dictated for his earliest journal, the present journal’s businesslike documentary treatment yields little insight into the interpersonal dynamics of their estrangement or the impact that severing ties to former close associates had on JS. Robinson also copied a letter from a Missouri landholder offering property at De Witt, Carroll County, to JS as a strategic site for control of commerce in the region. A purchase was eventually consummated, and Latter-day Saints settled there, angering those Missourians who objected to Mormon settlement outside Caldwell County.

Following copies of brief personal revelations that JS dictated for apostles David W. Patten and Brigham Young in mid-April 1838, Robinson recorded JS’s 26 April 1838 revelation mandating the continued growth of Far West, the construction of a temple there, and the establishment of Latter-day Saint settlements in that vicinity. The revelation sanctioned the name for the church that JS and others had recently begun to use: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

After inscribing this substantial body of recapitulations and copied documents, Robinson recorded daily journal entries, beginning with an entry for 27 April 1838. By this point, Robinson was serving as a scribe to the First Presidency, and the journal focused not only on JS but also on Sidney Rigdon (Robinson’s father-in-law) and Hyrum Smith, both counselors in the church presidency. Frequently, but not consistently, the scribe accompanied JS and the presidency on trips away from Far West. However, since the record book was large, Robinson likely did not carry it with him on every occasion, and a number of entries may not have been recorded until several days later.

The first day of Robinson’s regular journal entries, 27 April, was the same day JS, Rigdon, and Robinson started JS’s history. Thus a promising record-keeping routine began to be established, which lasted for six weeks. Entries for the first three weeks document a brief interlude of settled existence in Far West, with JS and his counselors collaborating on the history, studying grammar, and attending meetings, and JS working his garden. However, the presidency was soon on the move again. After receiving word of a sizable migration of Latter-day Saints to Missouri, they left Far West for Daviess County in mid-May to select and survey lands for future arrivals. JS’s labors in the north were punctuated by brief visits home, during one of which Emma Smith gave birth to their son Alexander.

Settling in sparsely settled Daviess County offered incoming Latter-day Saints, many of whom were poor, a place to live while neither buying nor renting. As squatters on United States government land, heads of households could apply for preemption rights (first right of purchase) on up to 160 acres of land that they occupied, pending completion of official government land surveys. Applicants were not required—or even allowed—to pay the government for the land until after the surveys were completed. Then, to acquire title to the property, they were to pay the relatively low price of $1.25 per acre prior to an announced date, after which their property would otherwise be offered for sale to the general public, along with the unclaimed land in the surveyed area. The selection and private surveying of Daviess County land by JS and his colleagues provided the basis for orderly and relatively compact settlement coordinated by church officials.23 Settling in Caldwell County, by contrast, involved more conventional purchases. Government surveys were already completed for that county, and government land was already being sold.

The pattern of record keeping became more varied after the presidency and their scribe traveled to Daviess County in early June. Robinson’s daily entries lapsed as the Mormons laid out a city plot for a Latter-day Saint settlement at Adam-ondi-Ahman, began building homes, and organized a stake. They persisted in creating the new settlement despite their Missouri neighbors’ earlier attempt to frighten the area’s first Mormon settlers into leaving Daviess County.24

Meanwhile, tensions continued between JS and the majority who supported him on the one hand and prominent excommunicants who remained in Caldwell County after being expelled from the church on the other. JS and Rigdon came to feel that peace and harmony among the Latter-day Saints—essential if they were to succeed in establishing Zion in Missouri—was impossible as long as these individuals remained among them. After Rigdon denounced these former leaders in a sermon in mid-June,25 they were threatened with violence, and several of them left the county. Active in compelling their departure was a new volunteer paramilitary organization of Mormon men called the Danites, of which Robinson was an officer. The Danites sought to rid the church of dissent, to ensure the fulfillment of church leaders’ directives, and later to help combat external threats against the Saints.

Although Robinson’s journal keeping for JS lapsed for most of June and July, he did note significant developments in three early July entries consisting primarily of copied correspondence and revelations. He wrote an entry for 4 July, when Sidney Rigdon’s oration at the Mormons’ celebration of Independence Day at Far West signaled their intentions to expand beyond the confines of Caldwell County and warned that they would not countenance persecution.26 The entry for 6 July is a copy of a letter received that day from Heber C. Kimball and Orson Hyde, en route to Far West after completion of their mission to the British Isles. It is followed by Robinson’s transcription of a letter from JS’s brother Don Carlos Smith reporting the circumstances of members of the extended Smith family moving together from Kirtland to Far West. At least six of the eight revelations recorded at that point in the journal were read to a church congregation at Far West on 8 July. Three dated 12 January 1838, the day that JS left Kirtland for Far West, focused on the church presidency, reinforcing their authority, establishing stringent requirements for any attempts to discipline them, and directing them to leave Kirtland and move to Missouri as soon as possible. Five more revelations, all dated 8 July, provided directions for the reorganization of the Quorum of Twelve and a proselytizing mission that they were to undertake in Europe, called for tithing to be instituted in the church, and gave instructions for several church leaders and former leaders. Between the January revelations and the July revelations, Robinson recorded a brief synopsis, from a millenarian perspective, of contemporary developments affecting the church in Missouri, including consequences of the expulsion of dissidents in June and the influx of numerous Latter-day Saint settlers to northwestern Missouri.

Robinson did not resume regular journal entries until 26 July. From that point, his journal keeping was relatively consistent through 10 September, when the journal ends. These entries show that expansion beyond Caldwell County—an integral part of Mormon plans—came at a price. Mormon immigrants from Canada were assigned to settle in Daviess County during summer 1838, and on 6 July, “Kirtland Camp,” the largest single group of Saints to leave Kirtland for Missouri, began their laborious trek.27 Their arrival made it evident to the Mormons’ neighbors in Daviess County that within a few months the Mormons would outnumber other citizens. Meanwhile, in late July, Carroll County residents pressed the Saints to leave De Witt. Further growth of Mormon numbers and influence was unthinkable for many residents of northwestern Missouri.

On election day, 6 August, William Peniston, a candidate for the state legislature, mounted a whiskey barrel at the village square at Gallatin, Daviess County, to persuade a crowd of men to prevent the Latter-day Saints from voting. A brawl ensued, and at Far West, JS heard from an otherwise credible non-Mormon source that the corpses of Latter-day Saint casualties were being withheld from church members in Daviess County, a report later proved false.28 JS accompanied a body of armed men to Daviess County to recover the bodies for burial but learned at Adam-ondi-Ahman that, despite multiple injuries, there were no fatalities on either side. There they also heard a rumor that local justice of the peace Adam Black was raising a mob to avenge blows the Mormons had landed in the Gallatin fracas. JS and his associates, now including prominent Adam-ondi-Ahman resident Lyman Wight, visited the home of Black, who a year earlier had warned Latter-day Saints to leave the county. The Mormons found no mob but obtained a signed commitment from Black that the rights of Latter-day Saints would be protected. The following day, a delegation of prominent Daviess County citizens met with JS, Wight, and other Latter-day Saints at Adam-ondi-Ahman, where both sides exchanged pledges to avoid injuring the other and to settle any disputes through legal channels.29

In violation of these commitments, Black and Peniston used an embellished account of the encounter at Black’s home to mobilize both legal and vigilante action against the Mormons. Peniston traveled with others to Richmond, Ray County, to recruit volunteers to help protect the old settlers of Daviess County. While there, Peniston showed local citizens an affidavit from Black claiming that the Mormon party that visited his house had threatened him with immediate death if he refused to sign their agreement.30 Peniston filed a complaint with Austin A. King, judge of the Fifth Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri. King’s jurisdiction included both Caldwell and Daviess counties, as well as Ray, Clay, Carroll, Clinton, and Livingston counties. King issued a warrant for the arrest of JS and Lyman Wight.31 Then Black, Peniston, and their allies fanned out to recruit volunteers from additional counties. After Black’s visit to Livingston County, Missouri newspapers spread claims that Mormons had threatened additional Daviess County settlers, destroyed crops, and perhaps even murdered Peniston and other prominent residents.32 Some counties, such as Ray and Chariton, responded by sending investigative committees.33 When JS and Wight were not arrested as anticipated, Peniston and other members of a Daviess County “Committee of Vigilance” again agitated throughout northwestern Missouri for volunteers to gather to Daviess County—this time to drive the Latter-day Saints out of the county.34

Black’s assertion that JS and other Latter-day Saints had threatened his life, coupled with a new claim that JS and Wight were resisting arrest, confirmed Missourians’ fears that the Latter-day Saints considered themselves above the law. Many Missourians concluded that they should take the law into their own hands.35 The vigilantes called for men from other counties to come armed to Daviess County on 7 September in preparation for an 8 September offensive against the Mormons.

In hopes of heading off confrontation and to counter the notion that they would not be subject to the law, JS and Wight submitted to arrest and attended a preliminary hearing on a charge of riot. On 7 September 1838, when JS appeared at the hearing, he was greeted by the anti-Mormons who had gathered in Daviess County. Judge King heard testimony and bound JS and Wight over for trial, but the anti-Mormon vigilantes were not pacified.36 The assault originally scheduled to begin on 8 September was merely postponed for two days while the vigilantes arranged with sympathizers in Ray County to deliver a stockpile of rifles on 9 September. As the present journal was coming to a close, Mormon companies of Caldwell County militia headed for Daviess County to protect the Latter-day Saints residing there. Another Mormon militia unit intercepted the shipment of weapons from Ray County, foiling plans for the offensive. After the vigilantes’ plan was thwarted, they confined their efforts for a time to terrorizing outlying Mormon homes; in response, Latter-day Saint militia from Far West entered Daviess County. In mid-September, state militia intervened. Mormon and non-Mormon groups from outside Daviess County were sent home, and crisis, for the moment, was averted.37

JS, “The Scriptory Book—of Joseph Smith Jr.—President of The Church of Jesus Christ, of Latterday Saints In all the World,” Journal, Mar.–Sept. 1838; handwriting of George W. Robinson and James Mulholland; sixty-nine pages; in “General,” Record Book, 1838, verso of Patriarchal Blessings, vol. 5, CHL. Includes redactions and archival marking.

JS’s “Scriptory Book” is recorded on pages 15 to 83 of a large record book entitled “General” that also includes a list of church members in Caldwell County, Missouri (pages 2–14), a copy of JS’s 16 December 1838 letter from the jail in Liberty, Missouri (pages 101–108), and an aborted record partially entitled “Recor” in unidentified handwriting (page 110). The book, which measures 13 x 8¼ x 1¾ inches (33 x 21 x 4 cm), has 182 leaves of ledger paper sized 12½ x 7¾ inches (32 x 20 cm) with thirty-seven lines in blue ink per page. There are eighteen gatherings of various sizes, each of about a dozen leaves. The text block is sewn all along over three vellum tapes. The heavy pink endpapers each consist of a pastedown and two flyleaves pasted together. The text block edges are stained green. The volume has a hardbound ledger-style binding with a hollow-back spine and glued-on blue-striped cloth headbands. It is bound in brown split-calfskin leather with blind-tooled decoration around the outside border and along the turned-in edges of the leather on the inside covers. At some point the letter “G” was hand printed in ink on the front cover. The original leather cover over the spine—which appears to have been intentionally removed—may have borne a title or filing notation.

The journal is inscribed in black ink that later turned brown and is almost entirely in the handwriting of George W. Robinson. James Mulholland’s handwriting appears in a copy of the 23 July 1837 revelation for Thomas B. Marsh (D&C 112) on pages 72–74. Running heads added by Robinson throughout the journal indicate the months of the entries on the page. The volume was later used in Nauvoo, Illinois, as a source for JS’s multivolume manuscript history of the church. During the preparation of the history, redactions and use marks were made in graphite pencil. Redactions in graphite and ink may have been made at other times as well. In 1845, the book was turned over so that the back cover became the front and the last page became the first. This side of the book was used to record patriarchal blessings. The original spine may have been removed at this time. The spine is now labeled with a number “5”, designating its volume number in a series of books of patriarchal blessings.

The volume is listed in Nauvoo and early Utah inventories of church records, indicating continuous custody.1 At some point, the leaf containing pages 54 and 55 was torn from the journal. This removed leaf—which is transcribed herein and contains, among other writings, the earliest extant text of an 8 July 1838 revelation for the Quorum of the Twelve (D&C 118)—was for a time kept in Revelation Book 2.2 It is now part of the Revelations Collection at the Church History Library.