Karen Lynn Davidson - 1831-1847

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www.josephsmithpapers.org

The Joseph Smith Papers Project is endorsed by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Art direction: Richard Erickson. Cover design: Scott Eggers. Interior design: Richard Erickson and Scott M. Mooy. Typography: Riley M. Lorimer and Alison Palmer. E-book: Ben Ellis Godfrey.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Joseph, 18051844, author.
Joseph Smith histories, 18321844 / Karen Lynn Davidson, David J. Whittaker,
Mark R. Ashurst-McGee, Richard L. Jensen, volume editors. pages cm (The Joseph Smith Papers. Histories; volume 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60641-196-4 (hardbound: alk. paper; v.1)
ISBN 978-1-60908-945-0 (hardbound: alk. paper; v.2)
1. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day SaintsHistory19th century.
2. Smith, Joseph, 18051844.
I. Davidson, Karen Lynn, editor. II. Whittaker, David J., editor. III. Ashurst-McGee, Mark, editor. IV. Jensen, Richard L., editor. V. Title. VI. Series: Smith, Joseph, 18051844. Joseph Smith papers. Histories; volume 1.

BX8611.S655 2012 289.309034dc23 2011048106

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Previously Published

Histories, Volume 1: Joseph Smith Histories, 18321844

Journals, Volume 1: 18321839

Journals, Volume 2: December 1841April 1843

Revelations and Translations: Manuscript Revelation Books, Facsimile Edition

Revelations and Translations, Volume 1: Manuscript Revelation Books

Revelations and Translations, Volume 2: Published Revelations

Staff Page

Executive Committee

Marlin K. Jensen

Marcus B. Nash

Richard E. Turley Jr.

Editorial Board

Richard E. Turley Jr.

Reid L. Neilson

Matthew J. Grow

Max J. Evans

National Advisory Board

Stephen J. Stein

Harry S. Stout

Terryl L. Givens

Susan Holbrook Perdue

Managing Editor

Ronald K. Esplin

Associate Managing Editor

Jeffrey N. Walker

Managing Editor

Ronald O. Barney

Program Manager

David L. Willden

Production Manager

R. Eric Smith

Senior Research and Review Editor

Richard L. Jensen

Project Archivist

Robin Scott Jensen

Editors Contributing to This Volume

Production Editors

Nathan N. Waite, Lead Editor

Constance Palmer Lewis

Rachel Osborne

Kathryn Burnside

Alison Palmer

Research Specialists

Noel R. Barton

Brian P. Barton

Steven Motteshard

Research and Review Specialists

Richard Lloyd Anderson

Mark Ashurst-McGee

Larry C. Porter

Steven R. Sorensen

Jill Mulvay Derr

Document Specialists

Dean C. Jesse

Jeffrey G. Cannon

Christy Best

View high resolution image here: http://bit.ly/1w6ymnn

Joseph Smiths residences. Joseph Smiths major places of residence and the general direction of his migrations. (Design by John Hamer.)

View high resolution image here: http://bit.ly/1tjtZRB

View high resolution image here: http://bit.ly/1kVO3sL

View high resolution image here: http://bit.ly/1oSfLaJ

Editorial Method

The goal of the Joseph Smith Papers Project is to present verbatim transcripts of Joseph Smiths papers in their entirety, making available the most essential sources of Smiths life and work and preserving the content of aging manuscripts from damage or loss. The papers include documents that were created by Joseph Smith, whether written or dictated by him or created by others under his direction, or that were owned by Smith, that is, received by him and kept in his office (as with incoming correspondence). Under these criteriaauthorship and ownershipthe project intends to publish, either in letterpress volumes or electronic form, every extant Joseph Smith document to which its editors can obtain access. This volume of the Histories series presents an unaltered and unabridged transcript of each of four histories initiated by assignment from Joseph Smith.

Document Selection

This volume includes transcripts of both handwritten and printed documents. When a history was intended for print, the earliest printed version is presented, rather than subsequent printings or any earlier manuscript version. Three of the documents in this volume are based at least in part on earlier texts, such as histories that include copies of revelations or printed works typeset from a manuscript (see the chart above for a list of the documents in this volume and their antecedent texts). The texts transcribed in this volume have been compared to all known extant source texts, and any significant differences are described in annotation.

Rules of Transcription

Handwritten documents of course present greater transcription challenges than do printed documents. Because of aging and sometimes damaged texts and imprecise penmanship, not all handwriting is legible or can be fully deciphered. Hurried writers often rendered words carelessly, and even the best writers and spellers left out letters on occasion or formed them imperfectly and incompletely. Text transcription and verification is therefore an imperfect art more than a science. Judgments about capitalization, for example, are informed not only by looking at the specific case at hand but by understanding the usual characteristics of each particular writer. The same is true for interpreting original spelling and punctuation. If a letter or other character is ambiguous, deference is given to the authors or scribes usual spelling and punctuation. Where this is ambiguous, modern spelling and punctuation are favored. Even the best transcribers and verifiers will differ from one another in making such judgments. Interested readers may wish to compare our transcriptions with images of the original documents at the Joseph Smith Papers website, josephsmithpapers.org, to better understand how our transcription rules have been applied to create these transcripts. Viewing the originals also provides other information that cannot be conveyed by typography.

To ensure accuracy in representing the texts, transcripts were verified three times, each time by a different set of eyes. The first two verifications were done using high-resolution scanned images. The first was a visual collation of the manuscript images with the transcripts, while the second was an independent and double-blind image-to-transcript tandem proofreading. The third and final verification of the transcripts was a visual collation with the original document. At this stage, the verifier employed magnification and ultraviolet light as needed to read badly faded text, recover heavily stricken material, untangle characters written over each other, and recover words canceled by messy wipe erasures made when the ink was still wet or removed by knife scraping after the ink had dried. The verified transcripts meet or exceed the transcription and verification requirements of the National Archives and Records Administrations National Historical Publications and Records Commission.