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March 4, 2025
The Joseph Smith Papers is pleased to announce its latest web publication. This release features the entirety of Documents, Volume 13: August–December 1843, including all annotation and introductions, as well as related documents and additional versions of documents from the time period. It also adds introductions and documents for trustee-in-trust records, land transactions in Iowa Territory and Nauvoo, Illinois, and Henry G. Sherwood’s agent papers. The release also includes about fifty Nauvoo Legion documents, indexes to the Nauvoo Registry of Deeds books, and more than fifty additional versions of documents from 1834 to 1841. New and updated entries in the calendar of documents are also included.
Documents, Volume 13 includes documents related to the many roles Joseph Smith filled during the fall and winter of 1843: prophet, president, and trustee-in-trust of the church; mayor of Nauvoo; chief justice of the municipal court; and commanding officer of the Nauvoo Legion. In December 1843, the city council approved a petition asking the United States Congress to grant Nauvoo the rights and powers of a federal territory. This petition was created partly in reaction to threats issued by Hancock County’s Anti-Mormon Party and the abduction of two Hancock County residents by church opponents. In addition, the city council approved a full-time police force to protect Smith and the residents of Nauvoo. Smith also wrote to potential presidential candidates asking them what their policies would be toward the Latter-day Saints. During this time, Joseph Smith taught key religious principles associated with the Nauvoo temple, including priesthood and sealing power. He also corresponded with a variety of individuals.
In the Financial Records series, this release includes a Trustee Account Book by Willard Richards, formally titled “Index To The Book of the Law of the Lord And Accounts Current with The Temple Committee & Store Nauvoo, December, 1841.” Richards, who was appointed temple recorder in December of 1841, used this book to track money and goods donated to the church. The first portion of the book contains an index to tithing donations made between December 1841 and December 1842 and recorded in the Book of the Law of the Lord. In the remainder of the book, Richards, William Clayton, and other clerks listed tithing donations in groups of similar items, such as watches, rifles, livestock, and bonds and deeds for land. Also included in this series are other land records from the church’s trustee office, illustrating Joseph Smith’s efforts to consolidate land donated to and owned by the church in Nauvoo and in Iowa Territory. In addition, this release contains papers from the work of Smith’s agent Henry G. Sherwood, who was assigned to manage the estate of James Mulholland, a scribe of Smith’s who died in November 1839. Sherwood oversaw the construction of a home for Mulholland’s family and paid other expenses as they arose.
In the Administrative Records series, this release adds documents related to the Nauvoo Legion, including loose minutes from courts-martial—meetings that were regularly held to conduct Legion business and regulate the duties of members—as well as other records related to these meetings such as resolutions, ordinances, and petitions. It includes minutes from meetings of the Nauvoo Legion Committee of Revision, which was appointed to revise the rules of the Legion, as well as documents related to several disciplinary courts-martial held for individual members of the Legion.
An introduction to the Register of Deeds records has also been added to the Administrative Records series, as well as two indexes to the Nauvoo Register of Deeds books. The first is an index to the first Nauvoo deed book (Book A), and the second is a list of all bonds and deeds recorded in Books A and B.
This release contains more images and transcripts of other versions of revelations, letters, and other documents dating from 1834 to 1841. These additional versions can be accessed from links in the calendar of documents as well as from a dropdown menu for the featured version of each document.