Footnotes
Rigdon, Smith & Co., Store Ledger, Sept. 1836–May 1837, p. [i]; “Mormonism in Ohio,” Aurora (New Lisbon, OH), 19 Jan. 1837, [3]. This was one of a few stores opened in the Kirtland area between 1835 and 1836. Reynolds Cahoon, Jared Carter, and Hyrum Smith started a store, sometimes referred to as the “Committee Store,” under the mercantile firm of Cahoon, Carter & Co. in June 1835. John F. Boynton and Lyman Johnson began their own dry goods store by 1837. (Advertisement, Northern Times, 9 Oct. 1835, [4]; Pratt, Account Book and Autobiography, Oct. 1836–Jan. 1837; Cowdery, Docket Book, 86, 98, 219, 224.)
Aurora. New Lisbon, OH. 1835–1837.
Northern Times. Kirtland, OH. 1835–[1836?].
Pratt, Orson. Account Book and Autobiography, 1833, 1836–1837. CHL.
Cowdery, Oliver. Docket Book, June–Sept. 1837. Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
These goods included items ranging from pocketknives and washboards to shoes, fabric, and books. Some of these goods were likely purchased wholesale from merchants in New York City and Buffalo, New York. Receipts and invoices for the mercantile firms of Rigdon, Smith & Co; Cahoon, Carter & Co.; and H. Smith & Co. document purchasing agents’ trips to Buffalo in June 1836 and New York City in October 1836 to obtain goods for the stores in Kirtland and Chester. (Buffalo and New York City Invoices, June and Oct. 1836, JS Office Papers, CHL.)
JS Office Papers / Joseph Smith Office Papers, ca. 1835–1845. CHL. MS 21600.
Historical Introduction to Letter from Newel K. Whitney, 20 Apr. 1837.
Letter from Emma Smith, 3 May 1837. Emma Smith, Newel K. Whitney, and Wilford Woodruff each mentioned unidentified enemies threatening JS’s life in April and May 1837. (See Letter from Newel K. Whitney, 20 Apr. 1837; Letter from Emma Smith, 25 Apr. 1837; and Woodruff, Journal, 13 Apr. 1837; see also Introduction to Part 6: 20 Apr.–14 Sept. 1837.)
Woodruff, Wilford. Journals, 1833–1898. Wilford Woodruff, Journals and Papers, 1828–1898. CHL. MS 1352.
For more on JS’s absence from Kirtland, see Historical Introduction to Letter from Newel K. Whitney, 20 Apr. 1837. According to extant records, JS took out two bills of goods from the Chester store during this six-day period. One is dated 22 May, the same day he made the list of promissory notes, and the other includes three different dates: 19 May, 22 May, and 24 May. (“Bill of Goods Taken from the Chester Store,” 20 May 1837, JS Collection, CHL; “Bill of Goods Taken from the Chester Store,” 19–24 May 1837, JS Office Papers, CHL.)
Coffin, Progressive Exercises in Book Keeping, 60; “Receivable,” in Oxford English Dictionary, 8:231.
Coffin, James H. Progressive Exercises in Book Keeping, by Single and Double Entry. Greenfield, MA: A. Phelps, 1836.
Oxford English Dictionary. Compact ed. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Three of the individuals named in the list have not been identified: E. Bevin, G. Kirkndall, and G. Coates. Samuel McBride may have been a relation of church member Reuben McBride, but no documentation indicates whether he too was a Mormon.
These were Sidney Rigdon, Samuel Smith, Alexander Badlam, and Edson Barney. (Rigdon, Smith & Co., Store Ledger, Sept. 1836–May 1837, pp. 5, 21, 31, 50.)
There is also a possibility that individuals buying goods from the store paid using promissory notes from other individuals. Promissory notes were negotiable and could be transferred from one person to another until paid. As specie and credible currency became scarcer in the Panic of 1837, and as skepticism increased toward the notes of the Kirtland Safety Society, promissory notes would have served as a replacement for other circulating mediums.