JS, History, 1838–1856, vol. F-1, created 9 Apr.–7 June 1856 and 20 Aug. 1856–6 Nov. 1856; handwriting of and Jonathan Grimshaw; 304 pages, plus 10 pages of addenda; CHL. This is the final volume of a six-volume manuscript history of the church. This sixth volume covers the period from 1 May to 8 Aug. 1844; the remaining five volumes, labeled A-1 through E-1, go through 30 Apr. 1844.
Historical Introduction
History, 1838-1856, volume F-1, constitutes the last of six volumes documenting the life of Joseph Smith and the early years of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The series is also known as the Manuscript History of the Church and was originally published serially from 1842 to 1846 and 1851 to 1858 as the “History of Joseph Smith” in the Times and Seasons and Deseret News. This volume contains JS’s history from 1 May 1844 to the events following his 27 June 1844 death, and it was compiled in Utah Territory in 1856.
The material recorded in volume F-1 was initially compiled under the direction of church historian , who was JS’s cousin, and also assistant church historian . Smith collaborated with in collecting material for the volume and creating a set of draft notes, which Smith dictated to Bullock and other clerks. Woodruff gathered additional material concerning the death of Joseph Smith as a supplement to George A. Smith’s work recording that event. Jonathan Grimshaw and , members of the Historian’s Office staff, transcribed the draft notes into the volume along with the text of designated documents.
According to the Historian’s Office journal, Jonathan Grimshaw initiated work on the text of volume F-1 on 9 April 1856, soon after Robert L. Campbell had completed work on volume E-1. (Historian’s Office, Journal, 5 and 9 Apr. 1856.) Grimshaw’s scribal work begins with an entry for 1 May 1844. Unlike previous volumes in which the numbering had run consecutively to page 2028, Grimshaw began anew with page 1. He transcribed 150 pages by June 1856, and his last entry was for 23 June 1844. Though more of his writing does not appear in the volume, he continued to work in the office until 2 August, before leaving for the East that same month. (Historian’s Office, Journal, 2 and 10 Aug. 1856.)
assumed the role of scribe on 20 August 1856. (Historian’s Office, Journal, 20 Aug. 1856.) He incorporated ’s draft notes for the period 24–29 June 1844 on pages 151–189, providing an account of JS’s death and its immediate aftermath. He next transcribed a related extract from ’s 1854 History of Illinois on pages 190–204. Pages 205–227 were left blank.
provided the notes for the final portion of the text. This account begins with an entry for 22 June 1844 and continues the record through 8 August 1844, ending on page 304. (The volume also included ten pages of addenda.) The last specific entry in the Historian’s Office journal that captures at work on the history is for 6 November 1856. A 2 February 1857 Wilford Woodruff letter to indicates that on 30 January 1857, the “presidency sat and heard the history read up to the organization of the church in , 8th. day of August 1844.” (Historian’s Office, Journal, 6 Nov. 1856; Wilford Woodruff, Great Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to George A. Smith, 2 Feb. 1857, Historian’s Office, Letterpress Copybooks, vol. 1, p. 410; see also Wilford Woodruff, Great Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich, 28 Feb. 1857, Historian’s Office, Letterpress Copybooks, vol. 1, pp. 430–431.)
The pages of volume F-1 contain a record of the final weeks of JS’s life and the events of the ensuing days. The narrative commences with and arriving at , Illinois, on 1 May 1844 from their lumber-harvesting mission in the “” of Wisconsin Territory. As the late spring and summer of 1844 unfold, events intensify, especially those surrounding the suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor in mid-June. Legal action over the Expositor leads to a charge of riot, and subsequently JS is charged with treason and is incarcerated at the jail in , Illinois. The narrative of volume F-1 concludes with an account of the special church conference convened on 8 August 1844 to consider who should assume the leadership of the church.
<June 12> own, and must be known henceforth and forever I suppose as the ‘Mormon order!’ The external layer of stone is dressed with considerable neatness, and each of the <range of> pilasters by which it is ornamented, bears upon it a sculptural representation of the crescent, with the profile of a man’s face in strong relief— much in the style of that edifying picture of the moon you may have been wont to admire as well as myself in the Primer when a boy! The effect of this image is semi-solemn, semi-laughable, and certainly more than semi-singular. In the workshop beside the structure, in which a large number of stone cutters are employed, may be seen divers other carvings on stone, designed for the holy edifice, still more novel than that I have named. Among them are suns, full moons, and half the constellations of the firmament, to say nothing of the human faces of expression weird enough for an Egyptian Obelisk. There are 75 or 100 of the fraternity zealously at work at the present time hewing stone or laying it for the , all other <public> improvements being in perfect abeyance that this greatest and holiest of all may advance.
“The walls of the structure are about two feet in depth, and the solidity of the buttresses and the port-hole aspect of the basement apertures for windows, lend the pile more the appearance of a fortalice than a sanctuary. It has three entrances all on the West front. On each side of the main entrance is an apartment perfectly circular without window or loop-hole, or division of any kind, designed for some vestibular purpose, which none of our party could divine. At the eastern extremity is a large arched window, and here no doubt is to stand the altar. The basement story, as you look down into it, reminds you more of a wine cellar, with its dozen apartments or crypts, each divided from the other by ponderous masonry. In the center of the basement, resting upon the backs of eight white oxen carved from wood with passable skill, stands the Baptismal font, a rectangular box of some twelve feet square, and half as many in depth.
“From each side of this box appear the heads and shoulders of two oxen up to their knees in brick work, with most inexpressive eyes, most extensive ears, a remarkable longitude of face, and a protrusion of horns perfectly prodigious with a single exception, one horn of one unhappy ox having been torn off by some more than usually rude grasp, at the ‘altar!’ The effect of all this is of a character somewhat mixed. It is certainly a little startling in the dim religious duskiness of the spot, to stumble upon these eight white oxen, standing so still, and stiff, and stark, and solemn, with their great strong eyes staring sternly at you for the intrusion; and yet, the first inclination, after recovering from your surprise is to laugh and that most heartily. The idea of this font seems to have been revealed to the prophet directly by the plan of the molten sea of Solomon’s Temple, which we are told in the old scriptures, stood upon twelve oxen, three looking to the north, three to the south, three to the east, and three to the west; all their hinder parts inward.
“This Mormon , should it ever be complete— and it has been three years reaching its second floor, will certainly present one of the most extraordinary architectural structures since the era of the erection of the massive sanctuaries of the Nile— of descriptions of the ruins of which the spectator is by this reminded! Its interior structure and arrangement, we were informed by the prophet, had not been decided on— (he did not tell me ‘had not yet been revealed to him’, as he did to many others)— and indeed he was by no means certain he should erect the edifice externally in accordance with the plan proposed and published.
“The view of the roofs and streets of the beneath, the farms and fields away to the north and east, the winding its dark and serpentine course in front, the long and low wooded island lying midway of the stream, the little village of , [p. 93]