LDS Church releases final volume of founding prophet’s letters on anniversary of his death

After 22 years of documenting, filing, writing and editing, the historians and researchers behind The Joseph Smith Papers published the final volume of their groundbreaking project Tuesday on the 179th anniversary of the church founder’s death.

The full 27-volume library — dubbed the “lunar mission” of Mormon historical research — follows Smith, the first prophet-president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from the beginning of his spiritual revelations to his martyrdom in Carthage Jail. “Documents Volume 15,” released Tuesday, contains 104 records that include the official announcement of Smith’s slaying in 1844 and the last six weeks of his life.

“Future historians may well call The Joseph Smith Papers the most important church-sponsored historical project of the 21st century,” Benjamin Park, a history professor at Sam Houston State University, wrote in an email. “The project has trained a generation of historians, forced church leaders and members alike to confront difficult historical issues, and demonstrated that the faith need not be afraid of its past.”

Park, author of the acclaimed “Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier” and whose historical training began as an undergraduate research assistant for the project while he was a Brigham Young University student, called the sweeping effort a “landmark work of documentary editing, and a harbinger of what can happen when ecclesiastical leaders trust and enable their best historians.”

Joseph’s last days

The final volume presents a frenzy of letters sent between Smith, his friends and wife Emma Smith during the time leading up to his murder in an Illinois jail. Though most of Emma’s letters have not been recovered, historian Elizabeth Kuehn uses her husband’s remaining letters to “read between the lines.”

When Smith writes to Emma while incarcerated, he urges her to let him know if she leaves Nauvoo, implying that she had plans to take their family elsewhere. This, Kuehn noted, was previously unknown to church historians.

Smith’s letters suggest that he expected to be found innocent of the treason charges on which he was jailed. The then-38-year-old church leader told her not to have “any fear” of harm coming to him.

“I am very much resigned to my lot,” he wrote, “knowing I am justified and have done the best that could be done.”

For head archivist Sharalyn Howcroft, recording Smith’s death parallels the ending of the project. Saying goodbye means she finally is able to look back on how she has been changed by it. She has been a part of The Joseph Smith Papers since its genesis in 2001, representing the longest project she has ever undertaken.

“This is the monolith,” Howcroft said. “It’s made me more persistent. There’s something to be said for the type of tenacity that creates in oneself.”

Recording the roots of the Utah-based faith is key not only for future historians, Howcroft said, but also for rank-and-file Latter-day Saints, so they can have a complete understanding of the church to which they belong.

Moving beyond the myth

The denomination finds itself in a rare position, Howcroft said, because many other Christian sects do not have full documentation of their origins. Latter-day Saints have the opportunity to get to know crucial figures, with Smith at the forefront, in their religion’s past.

“You start to create a myth around this person,” Howcroft said, “because they are so significant and so enormous in their impact. The one thing The Joseph Smith Papers does is strips that away.”

During her studies, Howcroft has found Smith to be a complex person. She sees him as someone who was trying to propel the church from an organization with a dozen members into something much larger, with a much more uplifting and lasting influence.

He was, Howcroft said, a big-picture kind of man.

And the tale of the tape for The Joseph Smith Papers reveals a big-picture endeavor. It includes, according to a news release, 1,306 journal entries, 643 letters, 155 revelations, 18,822 pages and 7,452,072 words.

“This project has produced the most authoritative, comprehensive and reliable source available on the subject of Joseph Smith and the [church’s] history,” said Utah business leader and philanthropist Gail Miller, who along with her late husband, Larry Miller, helped fund the undertaking. The release pointed out that Larry, expanding on a popular Latter-day Saint hymn, had professed that through these books “billions [the song says millions] will know brother Joseph again.”

Increasing the focus on women

This is hardly the end of the church’s efforts to record its own history. Howcroft will also participate, for instance, as an archivist in several more projects alongside R. Eric Smith, who worked as a Joseph Smith Papers general editor. Ongoing projects include recording the lives of other influential church figures such as Brigham Young, William Clayton, Emmeline Wells and Eliza Snow.

But these projects take four to five years. Shifting from decades’ worth of work — as with The Joseph Smith Papers — to shorter bursts has felt strange, said Smith, who has been on the project for 17 years.

“Somehow it’s gone by really fast,” Smith said. “And here we are using the past tense to talk about all that we’ve published. It’s surprising.”

Smith said he looks forward, however, to exploring other parts of church history that the formal organization sometimes glosses over. He is especially excited about women’s history within the faith, including the formation of the women’s Relief Society, the children’s Primary and the Young Women for teenage girls.

Viewing those organizations through the eyes of Snow and Wells is important for today’s Latter-day Saint women, he said. Smith believes such work can boost their visibility.

“Everybody knows that area has been long neglected,” Smith said. “And now you can just see that there’s people out there who are now able to see themselves in history in a way that they weren’t before.”

Latter-day Saint apostle David Bednar is thrilled to see that church history work is far from over. The reach of the organization’s past into its present is evident, he said, and he hopes to see as much documented as possible.

“All I would simply say,” Bednar said, “is that you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

News editor David Noyce contributed to this story.