JS, Notice, “To All Concerned,” , Geauga Co., OH, 24 Jan. 1837. Featured version published in “To All Concerned,” Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate, Jan. 1837, 3:447. For more complete source information, see the source note for Letter to Oliver Cowdery, Dec. 1834.
Historical Introduction
On 5 December 1835, JS sent a letter to the editor of the Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate stating that he would refuse all unpaid mail addressed to him. Yet he and other church leaders in , Ohio, continued receiving mail with unpaid postage, an issue apparently compounded by an increasing quantity of incoming letters in late 1836 and early 1837. In the notice featured here, JS again took space in the Messenger and Advocate to remind anyone sending mail to him to pay the postage on their letters. It appears that JS did in fact decline to pay the postage on unpaid letters in the months following the notice’s publication. By July 1837, according to the Painesville Telegraph, the post office held eight letters addressed to JS, and another dozen addressed to him and his associates, for which the postage had not been paid.
Owing to the multiplicity of Letters with which I am crowded, I am again under the necessity of saying, through the medium of the Messenger, that I will not, hereafter, take any letters from the Post-office, unless they are post-paid.