John Taylor’s Watch: Holy Relic, Cultural Artifact

Alan Morrell, a curator at the Church History Museum, contributes this installment in the JI’s material culture month. Alan is completing a doctorate in American History at the University of Utah, and he has degrees from BYU and Villanova. 

I have an iPhone because I once missed an appointment. I was so engulfed in my research, I forgot about a meeting and didn’t realize it until it was already over. My wife teases me about being absent-minded, but she wasn’t amused when I told her what had happened. After years of marriage to a poor grad student, she was thrilled that I had a paying job. She worried that I’d screw it up so she went out and bought me something that could keep me on track. Now, the time and my schedule are always available, with reminders of upcoming appointments.

In our hyper-connected modern world, we quickly learn to become time conscious. David S. Landes, author of Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World considered the mechanical clock to be “one of the great inventions in the history of mankind: not in a class with fire and the wheel, but comparable to movable type in its revolutionary implications for cultural values, technological change, social and political organization, and personality.”[1]

Historian Alexis McCrossen examined the records of watch repairmen in 19th-century western Massachusetts and observed that “Americans had been living with watches and clocks for decades without fully tapping into the potential they provided for coordination and maximization of time.”[2] This changed in the 1820s when the volume of pocket watches in the United States increased drastically. By the 1840s, the price of a clock or watch had dropped to the point that even a person of modest income could afford one.

John Taylor. Courtesy Wikimedia

This was the world of John Taylor. Born on November 1, 1808 in Milnthorpe, Westmorland, England, he moved to Toronto, Canada, in 1832. Six years later, he was a Mormon apostle. I do not know when John Taylor started carrying a watch. The multiple appointments of a Latter-day Saint leader would have certainly required that Taylor be conscious of the time. The narrative history that Joseph Smith started in 1838 demonstrates that time consciousness was an essential part of the Mormon community. Recorders noted the times of events such as the departure of the “Maid of Iowa” at 10 A.M. on May 1, meetings of Church leaders from 2 to 6 and again from 8 to 10 P.M. the next day, or a court martial at 9 A.M. on May 4.[3]

It is not surprising, then, that on the evening of June 27, 1844, John Taylor was wearing his watch as he sat with Joseph and Hyrum Smith and Willard Richards. The previous days had been busy as he met with the governor, lawyers, and leading citizens in an effort to free the Smith brothers. Readers know the story of the martyrdom. Within minutes, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were dead and John Taylor was severely injured. Taylor described getting shot, “As I reached the window, and was on the point of leaping out, I was struck by a ball from the door about midway of my thigh. . . . I fell upon the window-sill, and cried out, ‘I am shot!’ Not possessing any power to move, I felt myself falling outside of the window, but immediately I fell inside, from some, at that time, unknown cause”[4]. He was badly wounded. Four bullets had ripped through his body, one tearing away a portion of his hip the size of his hand. Willard Richards who escaped the barrage without injury dragged Taylor into a cell, covered him with a mattress in an effort to hide him, and said he hoped Taylor would survive as he expected to be killed within a few moments. The mob, perhaps fearing that the Mormons were coming, fled. Both Taylor and Richards were spared.

John Taylor’s Watch. Courtesy PBS

Willard Richards had John Taylor moved to Hamilton’s tavern and then went about the business of preparing for the removal of Joseph and Hyrum Smith’s bodies. When Richards left for Nauvoo, John Taylor asked him to take his watch and purse with him, as he feared they would be stolen. Several days later, Taylor was at his home in Nauvoo still convalescing when he was once again reunited with his watch. At this moment, the watch was transformed from a mere timepiece to a holy relic. His family discovered that the watch had been “struck with a ball” and examination of his vest revealed a cut in the vest pocket that had contained his watch. He later explained, “I was indeed falling out [of the window at Carthage Jail], when some villain aimed at my heart. The ball struck my watch, and forced me back; if I had fallen out I should assuredly have been killed, if not by the fall, by those around, and this ball, intended to dispatch me, was turned by an overruling Providence into a messenger of mercy, and saved my life.” He concluded, “I felt that the Lord had preserved me by a special act of mercy; that my time had not yet come, and that I had still a work to perform upon the earth.”[5]

The story of John Taylor’s miraculous preservation spread quickly. Within a few weeks, several accounts mentioned that Taylor’s watch had been hit by a ball.[6] The watch become an integral part of the telling of the martyrdom; the story spread wide and far. The relic remained in the family until 1934 when John Taylor’s grandson, Alonzo Eugene Hyde, Jr., gave it to LDS President Heber J. Grant, who forwarded it to the museum at the Bureau of Information, a precursor of the Church History Museum.[7] Since 1990, the John Taylor watch has been on public display at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City, a highlight for visitors of the museum’s “A Covenant Restored” exhibit.

By the latter part of the 90s, several individuals began to research and write about their questions surrounding the long-accepted story of the John Taylor watch. They could not believe that a musket ball would do so little damage to a watch. In Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, A People of Promise, Historian Glen Leonard cited the unpublished research of Neal and Gayle Ord when he wrote that after John Taylor was first shot in the leg, “He collapsed on the wide sill, denting the back of his vest pocket watch. The force shattered the glass cover of the timepiece against his ribs and pushed the internal gear pins against the enamel face, popping out a small segment later mistakenly identified as a bullet hole.”[8] Joseph L. and David W. Lyon’s 2008 BYU Studies article “Physical Evidence at Carthage Jail and What it Reveals about the Assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith” is probably the most exhaustive published scholarship arguing this position.[9] A couple years later, Joseph Lyon’s scholarship received popular attention after his presentation at BYU Education Week.[10] Kenneth W. Godfrey’s interview for the KJZZ Joseph Smith Papers television series furthered this narrative for a popular audience.[11]

A search of sources, both popular and scholarly, online and in print, shows that both stories are alive and well today. This begs several questions. Has the window sill explanation become the new master narrative for scholars? Has this narrative moved out of scholarly circles into the Mormon mainstream? Does the window sill remove the miraculous from the story? Do some individuals use this as another example of scholars just trying to destroy faith? Is there any evidence of deceit by those who originated or propagated the original story? Regardless of the answers to these questions, we should be grateful that John Taylor believed the watch saved his life. It may be the only reason it is still around. What good is a watch that doesn’t keep time?

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[1] David S. Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1983), p. 6.

[2] Alexis McCrossen, “The ‘Very Delicate Construction’ of Pocket Watches and Time Consciousness in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” Winterthur Portfolio Vol. 44, No. 1 (Spring 2010)

[3] Historian’s Office history of the Church 1839-1882. http://eadview.lds.org/findingaid/CR%20100%20102, Book F1

[4] “The Martyrdom of Joseph Smith” by President John Taylor (http://archive.org/stream/cityofsaintsacro00burt#page/517/mode/2up), Appendix III.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Jenetta Richards letter to her family, 8 July 1844, in Our Pioneer Heritage, vol. 3, p. 130; Times and Seasons 15 July 1844; Nauvoo Neighbor 24 July 1844; and Times and Seasons 1 August 1844

[7] Deseret News, 8 November 1934

[8] Glen M. Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, A People of Promise, Deseret Book, 2002, pp. 397-98.

[9] Joseph L. Lyon and David W. Lyon, “Physical Evidence at Carthage Jail and What It Reveals about the Assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith,” BYU Studies 47:4. https://byustudies.byu.edu/showTitle.aspx?title=7980

[10] “Education Week: Separating Facts from Fiction about the Prophet’s Death,” Deseret News, Sept. 7, 2010, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705385933/Education-Week-Separating-facts-from-fiction-about-the-Prophets-death.html?pg=all

[11] “John Taylor’s Watch ‘The Real Story” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOlH26SE55k

A Touchstone of the Past: The Face Wheel from Haun’s Mill

Tiffany T. Bowles offers this installment in the JI’s material culture month. Tiffany is a Curator of Education at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. A native of Orem, Utah, she received a BA degree in history from BYU and an MA in Historical Administration from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois. She has worked for the National Park Service at Natchez National Historical Park in Natchez, Mississippi, and Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois. In addition, she has worked at the Illinois State Military Museum and volunteered for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

On a quiet fall day in October 1838, Amanda Barnes Smith and her family busily worked to prepare a campsite on the banks of Shoal Creek in the small community of Haun’s Mill, Missouri. After a grueling journey from Kirtland, Ohio, the Smiths were relieved at the prospect of settling near others of their Latter-day Saint faith on the unfamiliar frontier.

Without warning, the contentment of the autumn afternoon was broken by the sounds of a fast approaching mob. The men of the settlement gathered in a small blacksmith shop, prepared to defend themselves and their families. Amanda Smith and two of her children “escaped across the millpond on a slab-walk,” and sought safety in “some bottom land” near the creek [1]. When the firing ceased, Amanda returned to the blacksmith shop to find her husband and one of her sons among the 17 dead.

In Latter-day Saint memory, the brutality of the massacre at Haun’s Mill epitomizes decades of persecution endured by early members of the Church. Some Latter-day Saints today commemorate and try to make sense of this defining event in Church history by looking to the power of place and visiting the location of the massacre. A visit to this site today requires a long, bumpy drive on dirt and gravel roads (a hazardous journey after a rainstorm). The site of the massacre is an open field along a shallow creek bed. The only indication of the violent events that occurred at this location is a small sign detailing the events of October 30, 1838.

Others might look to the power of objects in making sense of the Haun’s Mill tragedy. Objects have the unique ability to provide a tangible connection to the past and allow us to transform “experience into substance” [2]. Steven Lubar and Kathleen Kenrick, Curators at the National Museum of American History, describe artifacts as “the touchstones that bring memories and meanings to life” [3]. Unfortunately, since the mill on Shoal Creek was torn down in 1845, tangible ties to Haun’s Mill are rare, though interest in objects related to the massacre has spanned two centuries.

In September 1888, Church historian Andrew Jenson and colleagues Edward Stevenson and Joseph S. Black embarked on a journey to visit Church history sites across the country. At Haun’s Mill, they noted a “remnant of the old mill dam,” including “five large pieces of timber left in the middle of the creek.” They mentioned standing “upon a solid ledge of rock,” where the milldam was originally located. The group then searched for the well where those murdered in the attack had been hastily buried. The site was marked “by an old millstone, formerly belonging to Jacob Haun’s mill” [4].

Latter-day Saint photographer George Edward Anderson mentioned another millstone when he visited Haun’s Mill in May 1907. He wrote of crossing the creek and finding “one of the old millstones, which we worked out of the ground and [then moved it] down to the edge of the creek and made two or three negatives of it, putting an inscription on one side” [5]. This particular stone was later moved to a city park in Breckenridge, Missouri [6].

Just two months after George Edward Anderson’s visit to Haun’s Mill, Latter-day Saint Charles White took a seven-day trip across the state of Missouri. Along the way, he gathered “relics” at each of the sites, hoping to establish a tangible connection not only to the various locations, but to the events that transpired there. At Haun’s Mill, White recorded that he waded out into Shoal Creek and broke several pieces off of an original millstone “as a relic of the blackest crime that was ever committed in our fair country” [7].

The interest in objects related to the Haun’s Mill Massacre continued into the late 20th century, when “Cowboy” Bill Howell, a resident of the area, discovered a piece of cast iron protruding from the bank of Shoal Creek. He assumed that he had found “the metal frame for half of the waterwheel from the old mill,” and “hoped that someday he might run upon the matching other half so he could reconstruct the wheel” [8]. In April 1986, Latter-day Saint Institute of Religion instructors Newell R. Kitchen and John L. Fowles asked Cowboy Bill if he would be interested in selling the metal wheel fragment to them, which he did for $25. Kitchen and Fowles later determined that the cast iron artifact was not a wheel frame, but was actually a “face wheel,” or a gear wheel that transferred power from the waterwheel to the rest of the mill’s machinery [9]. On August 11, 1986, the men delivered the face wheel to the LDS Church History Museum in Salt Lake City, where the artifact is now displayed as the lone representative of one of the most tragic events in Church history [10].

How can this rusty piece of cast iron connect us to the events of October 30, 1838? The basic function of this face wheel gives us insight into the type of work that was done at the mill on Shoal Creek. Face wheels of this kind were common in gristmills of the time period, and gristmills were used to grind grain into flour. The probability that the mill at the Haun’s Mill settlement was a gristmill is substantiated by a statement from Latter-day Saint Ellis Eamut who recorded that non-Mormon residents of the area were initially friendly with the Saints, using “[our] mill[s] for grinding” [11]. Interestingly, Eamut mentions that they also used the mill for ‘sawing,” indicating that the mill functioned as both a gristmill and a sawmill. A study of nineteenth century mills in South Carolina states that “a saw mill could often be found at the site of a grist mill. The two could be powered by the same wheel or turbine by using different gearing” [12].

In addition to increasing our understanding of the type of work done at the mill, the face wheel artifact can also connect us to the personal stories of Haun’s Mill. Latter-day Saint convert and successful millwright Jacob Myers from Richland County, Ohio, constructed the original mill on Shoal Creek in 1836. Myers later sold the mill to Jacob Haun, and Myers’ son, Jacob Myers Jr., helped Haun operate the mill. On the day of the 1838 attack at Haun’s Mill, Jacob Myers Jr. was shot through the leg as he attempted to run from the ill-fated blacksmith shop. One of the attackers approached him with a corn cutter, intending to kill him. According to Myers’ sister, “As [the attacker] raised his arm to strike, another one of the mob called out to him and told him if he touched my brother he would shoot him,” for Myers had “ground many a grist for him” [13]. Instead of killing him, the mob carried Myers to his home. His skill as a worker at the mill had saved his life.

The rusty face wheel on display at the Church History Museum serves as a tangible connection to the early Saints, increasing our understanding of their life and times and serving as a reminder of their sacrifices and courage. In a broader sense, this artifact also represents, as a plaque near the original millstone in Breckenridge, Missouri, states, “The perpetual need for greater understanding and tolerance between all peoples” [14].

Original cast iron face wheel from Haun’s Mill on display at the Church History Museum

 George Edward Anderson 1907 photograph of original Haun’s Mill millstone, Courtesy Church Archives

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[1] Journal of Amanda Barnes Smith, unpublished typescript, 3.

[2] Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 265.

[3] Steven Lubar and Kathleen Kenrick, “Looking at Artifacts, Thinking about History,” Smithsonian National Museum of American History “Guide to Doing History with Objects,” http://objectofhistory.org/guide/.

[4] “Half a Century Since,” Deseret News (October 3, 1888), 10. The “red millstone fragment” that marked the well was moved by area resident Glen E. Setzer in 1941. Setzer, unaware of the significance of the stone’s location, moved it to the site of a marker he constructed near the road (‘story of Haun’s Mill’ by the Missouri Mormon Frontier Foundation, unpublished typescript, 2003, 5).

[5] Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, T. Jeffrey Cottle, and Ted D. Stoddard, eds., Church History in Black and White: George Edward Anderson’s Photographic Mission to Latter-day Saint Historical Sites (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1995), 97, as quoted in Alexander L. Baugh, “The Haun’s Mill Stone at Breckenridge,” Mormon Historical Studies 2, no. 2 (Fall 2001), 211.

[6] Baugh, “The Haun’s Mill Stone at Breckenridge,” 211.

[7] Charles White, Charles White, Journal, 1907 [typescript] MSS SC 219, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, p. 13.

[8] Newell R. Kitchen and John L. Fowles, “Finding the Haun’s Mill Face Wheel,” Mormon Historical Studies 4, no. 2 (Fall 2003), 167.

[9] Kitchen and Fowles, “Finding the Haun’s Mill Face Wheel,” 170.

[10] Artifact acquisition records, artifact number LDS 87-26, Church History Museum.

[11] Ellis Eamut, “Reminiscence,” in Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 30 October 1838, 11.

[12] Chad O. Braley, Southeastern Archaeological Services, Inc., “Mills in the Upcountry: A Historic Context, and a Summary of a Mill Site on the Peters Creek Heritage Preserve, Spartanburg County, South Carolina,” unpublished manuscript prepared for the Spartanburg Water Authority, 2005, 12.

[13] Artemisia Sidnie Myers Foote, “Reminiscences, 1850-1899,” MSS SC 999, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

[14] Historical marker at Breckenridge, Missouri City Park, dedicated May 26, 2000.

A Crash Course in Material Culture for Tourists: The Mormon Beehive

Is this really a post about material culture? I started out thinking it would be, but I suppose it hasn’t really ended up that way as I’m not analyzing the ways in which the makers or users of these objects physically interact with them. Yet I think there’s something significant in the fact that the Mormon beehive is such a substantial physical presence, both as it is materially incorporated into so many Mormon sites and as it appears in so many of the mundane physical assertions of state power in Utah. Perhaps I’m grasping at straws in an effort to anchor myself to our monthly theme here at JI ? I’ll leave it for the readers of this post to decide!

I?ve always been a very visual person, and I take great delight in quizzing myself and the people around me on the people and pictures that we encounter in our everyday lives. I?m told it?s something of a trial to watch any BBC production with me, as every time a new character appears on screen I immediately give my fellow viewers a brief history of the actor?s previous performances and explain how their previous roles are being used to shape the audience?s reaction to the current character. (This might explain why my husband often chooses to go do something else when I turn on Masterpiece Theatre….) I do the same thing with Disney movies, and I also delighted, when I worked for the Disney Store in college and made frequent excursions to Orlando, at finding the ?hidden Mickeys? that Disney incorporates into designs all over its theme parks. It?s a shame Dan Brown isn?t better at what he does ? I?m a big fan of finding and analyzing hidden symbols… when they?re well hidden (or at least unnoticed or misunderstood by many) and worth finding anyway.

So imagine how much fun I have with the many not-so-hidden but all-too-overlooked symbols I have learned through my study of the Latter-day Saints (as evidenced here by the fact that all of the pictures below are mine, unless otherwise noted).

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Elder George P. Lee and the New Jerusalem: A Reception History of 3 Nephi 21:22-23

?Do you think President Kimball approves of your action?? This question, asked by an unnamed general authority of the soon-to-be excommunicated Elder George P. Lee of the First Quorum of the 70, captured the lingering tensions over the rapid decline of the ?Day of the Lamanite? that had marked Mormon views of Native Americans in the second half of the twentieth century. Lee, the first general authority of Native descent, was himself the product of several of the programs instituted under the direction of Apostle Spencer W. Kimball designed to educate American Indians and aid their acculturation into the dominant society. Even at the time of Lee?s call to the 70 in 1975, the church had begun reallocating resources away from the so-called ?Lamanite programs,? but the full implications of these decisions were not apparent until the mid-1980s. Lee responded to the question posed above by laying out a distinct interpretation of 3 Nephi 21:22-23, an interpretation that he argued Kimball had shared and that the General Authorities in the 1980s had abandoned. The 1980s, known as the decade when Church President Ezra Taft Benson challenged the Saints to increase and improve their devotional usage of the Book of Mormon?a challenge that saw marked results, at least as measured by the significant increase of citations to the work in General Conference talks?was also a decade of debate over the meaning of the book?s intended audience and purpose.[1]

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Responses: The Blythes Take on Succession

First of all, we hope you enjoy JI’s new look. And yes, we are aware that the “music notes” can easily catch your attention.

If the recent resurgence in Mormon schism studies did nothing more than give room for John Hamer’s phenomenal images, then it has served a noble purpose indeed.

But the blog is not the only thing that was in need of a facelift recently–so was the historiography surrounding the “succession crisis.” One of the popular topics that was repeatedly researched during the rise of New Mormon History, the story of how Mormonism became/remains so prone to schism has received a lot of attention. Historians like Michael Quinn, Andrew Ehat, Ron Esplin, and many others laid the archival groundwork for much of the narrative—and that’s just for the period immediately following Joseph Smith’s death. The John Whitmer Historical Association, which sponsors an annual conference as well as a biannual journal dedicated to the various traditions that race their roots back to Joseph Smith, continues to pump out fascinating scholarship year after year. And most of the major works in Mormon history now realize they must address these schism issues—think of the recent biographies of Parley Pratt and Brigham Young—it has begun to infiltrate the mainstream of Mormon studies.

But just like any topic within the wild and still inchoate (sub)field of Mormon history, its approaches have continued to evolve. In the beginning, very few works, besides that of Danny Jorgensen, invoked a theoretical methodology in tracking what Jorgensen called “Mormon Fissiparousness.” Rather, most narratives, while grounded in ground-breaking archival research, relied on basic teleological trajectories and focussed on seemingly objective tools like facts, dates, names, and words.

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“Milk Strippings” Story Redux: Thomas B. Marsh’s Reconciliation with George W. Harris

Every four years, the Sunday School curriculum cycle hits D&C/Church History. It’s during this time that we’re reminded of the story of Thomas B. Marsh, first President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who left the church in 1838. According to Apostle George A. Smith, whose 1856 telling of this story became the basis of subsequent renditions, in 1838 Elizabeth Marsh got into a dispute with Lucinda Harris over a pint of milk skimmings [1]. Believing that his wife’s good name was at stake, Marsh defended Elizabeth in a series of investigations held, according to Smith, by the Teachers Quorum, the Bishopric, the High Council, and the First Presidency. Smith indicated that, humiliated by each quorum’s decision against Elizabeth, Marsh left the church and swore in an affidavit that the Saints were “hostile towards the State of Missouri.”  In Smith’s account, “That affidavit brought from the government of Missouri an exterminating order, which drove some 15,000 Saints from their homes and habitations, and some thousands perished through suffering the exposure consequent on this state of affairs.”

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Review: Terryl Givens, The Viper on the Hearth, updated edition

Terryl L. Givens. The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, updated edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Paperback. 978-0-19-993380-8. $24.95.

Since its original publication in 1997, Terryl Givens? The Viper on the Hearth has been a mainstay of the study of Mormonism and anti-Mormonism in American culture. And deservedly so. Givens? work provided the first substantial scholarly book-length exploration of images of the Latter-day Saints in American culture in any time period. His examination of the representations of Mormons in the United States in the 19^th century is sweeping in its coverage of the period; thorough in its inclusion of a wide variety of sources, from newspapers to popular fiction to fictive memoirs; and convincing in its argument that, whatever American claims of separation of church and state and tolerance for differing religious views may have been, religion was at the heart of mainstream America?s intolerance, suspicion, and occasional violence toward the Mormons. For many students of Mormonism and of American religion, Viper has served as an introduction to anti-Mormonism in America. For the generation of scholars who have examined the subject since Viper?s first publication?including Megan Sanborn-Jones, Patrick Q. Mason, and J. Spencer Fluhman?Givens? scholarship has served as a guide. No one can engage in a study of anti-Mormonism in the United States without responding to his arguments about the mechanisms of and motivations behind anti-Mormon sentiment in American culture.

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New Article: “Early Mormon Patriarchy and the Paradoxes of Democratic Religiosity in Jacksonian America”

Desperate times (the expected dearth of posts at the end of the semester) call for desperate measures (narcissistically posting about our own scholarship).

Parley Pratt, whose theology was as rugged as his looks.

In summer 2009, I participated in the Mormon Scholars Summer Seminar, that year led by Terryl Givens and Matt Grow, where I had the opportunity to study the writings of the Pratt brothers. While my seminar paper was on Parley Pratt’s theology of embodiment, which soon evolved into a larger article on early Mormon theologies of embodiment in general, the topic with which I became particularly transfixed was how Joseph Smith’s teachings were adapted and appropriated during the first few years after his death. At first, I was interested in the very parochial nature of the issue—the specifics of theological development, who said what and when, and what ideas were forgotten, emphasized, or even created anew. But I then became even more interested in broader questions: how were Smith’s ideas interpreted in the first place within a specific cultural environment, and how did Smith’s successors utilize that environment when molding their own theology? And further, what does that process tell us about the development of religious traditions in general, and the progression of religion in antebellum America in particular?

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The Beginning of Better Days

First I must say this: Hooray! The publication of the Nauvoo Relief Society Minutes has been a long time coming?one hundred and seventy one years, to be exact. The Beginning of Better Days: Divine Instruction to Women from the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. by Sheri Dew and Virginia H. Pearce, presents powerful words and meaningful experiences, both with the Nauvoo Relief Society and with its interpretation.

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“& exhort the Church”: Some Thoughts on the July 1830 Revelation to Emma Smith

?We Latter-day Saints are Methodists, as far as they have gone, only we have advanced further.? -Joseph Smith to Peter Cartwright[1]

I?ve argued elsewhere that the above quote encapsulates how many Methodist converts to early Mormonism understood their new religion. The more I study the trajectory of Methodism in antebellum America and the beginnings of Mormonism, the more I?m convinced that the statement also highlights an actual historical truth. In matters of ecclesiology, theology, and liturgy, early Mormons?whether consciously or not (and I think there?s some of both going on)?took a concept originated and/or popularized by Methodists and went one step further, thus simultaneously building on and challenging the foundation from which the new religion sprang.[2] For this reason, among others, I think a close reading of Mormon texts?including scriptural texts?that pays particular attention to Methodism?s discursive community can yield important insights into the Mormon past.[3]

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