Directory of Scribes and Printers for the Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon
Directory of Scribes and Printers for the Printer’s
Manuscript of the Book of Mormon
The following
is a list of the
individuals who acted as scribes for the printer’s
manuscript or worked in the print shop of
during the months when the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon was being
published. These entries identify scribes and printers by complete name
(correctly spelled), along with birth and death dates. The entries also
have links to individual biography pages with additional
information, such as parentage and birthplace, migrations and places of
residence, dates of marriage and names of spouses, occupation and
denominational affiliation, religious and civic positions, and place of
death.
Because
unverified and sometimes incorrect data has been recirculated for
decades, professional genealogists on the staff of the Joseph Smith
Papers Project have utilized original sources whenever possible.
Scribe 2. Inscribing almost 15 percent of the manuscript,
the unknown scribe was the second-most prolific of the three scribes.
Though unidentified, scribe 2 could have been a member of the Smith
family or a close associate of JS. The work of copying the printer’s
manuscript took place in Manchester and Palmyra townships, New York, so
a member of the Whitmer family (who lived in nearby Fayette) could have
been scribe 2. Extant handwriting samples—including samples from Samuel
Smith, John Whitmer, and Peter Whitmer Jr.—do not positively match the
handwriting of scribe 2. Limited, later samples of handwriting from
Martin Harris, David Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, and Emma Smith also do not
match the handwriting of this scribe. A comparison of scribe 2’s
handwriting with a possible Joseph Smith Sr. handwriting sample proves
inconclusive. See Source Note and Historical Introduction to Printer’s
Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, circa Aug. 1829–ca. Jan.
1830.