Footnotes
JS left Washington DC for Philadelphia on 21 December 1840. Rigdon arrived in Philadelphia around 14 January 1840. (Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 21 Dec. 1839, 70; 14 Jan. 1840, 2.)
Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 27 Jan. 1840, 2; Letter from Elias Higbee, 9 Mar. 1840; Fleming, “Early Mormonism in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey,” 78.
Fleming, Stephen J. “‘Sweeping Everything Before It’: Early Mormonism in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.” BYU Studies 40 (2001): 72–104.
Coray, Autobiographical Sketch, 17–19.
Coray, Howard. Autobiographical Sketch, after 1883. Howard Coray, Papers, ca. 1840–1941. Photocopy. CHL. MS 2043, fd. 1.
Robinson was married to Rigdon’s oldest daughter, Athalia. It is unknown why Robinson was traveling to the eastern United States, but he may have been visiting family members around his birthplace, Pawlet, Vermont. A reminiscence states that he had passed through Indianapolis in November 1839. (“G. W. Robinson,” Times and Seasons, 15 Aug. 1842, 3:878.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
Rigdon possibly intended to return to Philadelphia in order to travel west by train. From Philadelphia, he could have traveled as far as 82 miles west to Columbia, Pennsylvania, by rail or 253 miles west to Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, by canal before traveling the rest of the way to Commerce by land. (Tanner, American Traveller, 99–100.)
Tanner, H. S. The American Traveller; or, Guide through the United States. Containing Brief Notices of the Several States, Cities, Principal Towns, Canals and Rail Roads, &c. with Tables of Distances, by Stage, Canal and Steam Boat Routes. 6th ed. Philadelphia: By the author, 1840.
More than twenty church leaders were in the eastern United States in early 1840, including the church’s delegation to the federal government, members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles awaiting passage to England, and several other elders who were embarking on the same mission with the Twelve. By the time Rigdon wrote this letter, however, those assigned to missions in England had set sail across the Atlantic Ocean. (See Letter from Heber C. Kimball, 9 July 1840.)
Likely a reference to the general conference of the church held in Nauvoo that commenced three days after Rigdon wrote this letter. (Minutes and Discourse, 6–8 Apr. 1840.)
See Titus 1:2; 3:7.