General Epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles (1847)
A letter to the Latter-day Saints everywhere, written at Winter Quarters on the Missouri and signed by Brigham Young on 23 December 1847. It reports the journey of the pioneer company to the Great Basin that year and tells the Saints to gather there.
The epistle closes: written at Winter Quarters, Omaha Nation, on the west bank of the Missouri River, and signed on 23 December 1847 on behalf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles by Brigham Young, president, with Willard Richards as clerk. Its first pages tell how the Saints left Nauvoo in 1846, how members of the council and 143 pioneers set out on 14 April 1847 and reached the Great Basin in the latter part of July, and how they chose the site of a city to be called Great Salt Lake City. The rest instructs the members to gather to that place.
It is the leaders’ own report, written within months of the journey. See Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints.
Cited in
- 6 April 1830, firm date