Footnotes
JS, Journal, 25 Nov. 1833; “The Outrage in Jackson County, Missouri,” The Evening and the Morning Star, Dec. 1833, 118–120.
The Evening and the Morning Star. Independence, MO, June 1832–July 1833; Kirtland, OH, Dec. 1833–Sept. 1834.
Revelation, 20 July 1831 [D&C 57:11]; Revelation, 12 Nov. 1831 [D&C 70:3–8]; Revelation, 4 Dec. 1831–B [D&C 72:20–21]; Minutes, 12 Nov. 1831; Parkin, “Joseph Smith and the United Firm,” 37–38.
Parkin, Max H. “Joseph Smith and the United Firm: The Growth and Decline of the Church’s First Master Plan of Business and Finance, Ohio and Missouri, 1832–1834.” BYU Studies 46, no. 3 (2007): 5–66.
Letter to Edward Partridge et al., 30 Mar. 1834. The new press, which began operating in Kirtland in December 1833, replaced the one damaged in Missouri.
B. F. Norris, Mentor, OH, to Mark Norris, Ypsilanti, Michigan Territory, 6 Jan. 1834, Mark Norris Papers, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, MI, as cited in David W. Grua, “Joseph Smith and the 1834 D. P. Hurlbut Case,” 38.
Grua, David W. “Joseph Smith and the 1834 D. P. Hurlbut Case.” BYU Studies 44, no. 1 (2005): 33–54.
Oliver Cowdery, Kirtland, OH, to William W. Phelps and John Whitmer, Clay Co., MO, 21 Jan. 1834, in Cowdery, Letterbook, 22.
Cowdery, Oliver. Letterbook, 1833–1838. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
Winchester, Plain Facts, 8–10.
Winchester, Benjamin. Plain Facts, Shewing the Origin of the Spaulding Story, concerning the Manuscript Found, and Its Being Transformed into the Book of Mormon; with a Short History of Dr. P. Hulbert, the Author of the Said Story . . . Re-published by George J. Adams, Minister of the Gospel, Bedford, England. To Which Is Added, a Letter from Elder S. Rigdon, Also, One from Elder O. Hyde, on the Above Subject. Bedford, England: C. B. Merry, 1841.
Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson Co., MO, 18 Aug. 1833. Hurlbut had delivered at least one advertised lecture in Kirtland about the alleged connection between Spalding’s work and the Book of Mormon; he also announced his intention to publish a book “which . . . would divulge the whole secret” of the supposedly fraudulent origins of the Book of Mormon. Some of those present at the lecture contributed funds to Hurlbut’s project, and an anti-Mormon committee in the area employed Hurlbut “to ascertain the real origin of the Book of Mormon, and to examine the validity of Joseph Smith’s claims to the character of a Prophet.” Hurlbut traveled through Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts in search for Spalding’s manuscript. He collected several affidavits from people in New York testifying against the character of JS and his family, and he claimed to have found Spalding’s manuscript, though he never published it. (Winchester, Plain Facts, 9–11; “To the Public,” Painesville [OH] Telegraph, 31 Jan. 1834, [3].)
Winchester, Benjamin. Plain Facts, Shewing the Origin of the Spaulding Story, concerning the Manuscript Found, and Its Being Transformed into the Book of Mormon; with a Short History of Dr. P. Hulbert, the Author of the Said Story . . . Re-published by George J. Adams, Minister of the Gospel, Bedford, England. To Which Is Added, a Letter from Elder S. Rigdon, Also, One from Elder O. Hyde, on the Above Subject. Bedford, England: C. B. Merry, 1841.
Painesville Telegraph. Painesville, OH. 1822–1986.
Winchester, Plain Facts, 11; Geauga Co., OH, Court of Common Pleas, Court Records, 1807–1904, Final Record Book P, pp. 431–432, microfilm 20,278, U.S. and Canada Record Collection, FHL.
Winchester, Benjamin. Plain Facts, Shewing the Origin of the Spaulding Story, concerning the Manuscript Found, and Its Being Transformed into the Book of Mormon; with a Short History of Dr. P. Hulbert, the Author of the Said Story . . . Re-published by George J. Adams, Minister of the Gospel, Bedford, England. To Which Is Added, a Letter from Elder S. Rigdon, Also, One from Elder O. Hyde, on the Above Subject. Bedford, England: C. B. Merry, 1841.
U.S. and Canada Record Collection. FHL.
Revelations of November and December 1831 mandated that a compilation of JS’s revelations be published. Efforts to publish such a compilation—titled the Book of Commandments—began in November 1831 but were interrupted on 20 July 1833 when a mob in Jackson County, Missouri, destroyed the church printing office. JS and his associates published a new collection of revelations, the Doctrine and Covenants, in Kirtland in 1835. A revelation dated 4 December 1831 stipulated that the church was also to publish JS’s translation of the Bible. This translation, however, was not published in JS’s lifetime. (Revelation, 1 Nov. 1831–B [D&C 1:6]; Revelation, 4 Dec. 1831–B [D&C 72:20–21]; Minutes, 1–2 Nov. 1831; Minutes, 12 Nov. 1831; Revelation, 2 Aug. 1833–B [D&C 94:10]; Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson Co., MO, 6 Aug. 1833.)
On 11 September 1833, United Firm members JS, Sidney Rigdon, Newel K. Whitney, Frederick G. Williams, and Oliver Cowdery held a council in which they determined to establish a printing press in Kirtland under the auspices of the firm “F. G. Williams and Company.” The firm was directed to publish a new paper, the Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate, and to continue, under the direction of Oliver Cowdery, publishing The Evening and the Morning Star—the church newspaper printed in Independence, Missouri, before the press there was destroyed in July 1833—until the paper could be moved back to Missouri. Members of the firm also planned to publish a weekly political paper later titled the Northern Times. Cowdery purchased a new press and type in New York, and the press began operation in December 1833. In a letter written two months later, JS recalled how he, Cowdery, and others had had to “lie every night for a long time upon our arms to keep off mobs, of forties, of eighties, & of hundreds to save our lives and the press.” (Minutes, 11 Sept. 1833; Crawley, Descriptive Bibliography, 1:47–53; JS, Journal, 4–6 and 18 Dec. 1833; Letter to Edward Partridge et al., 30 Mar. 1834, underlining in original.)
Crawley, Peter. A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. 3 vols. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1997–2012.