History of Joseph Smith (begun 1838)

Joseph SmithBegun in 1838; the first manuscript volume written 1839–1843

Joseph Smith’s own narrative of his visions, the Book of Mormon and the founding of his church, begun in 1838. It is his account, written eight years after the church was organized, and one of several he left of his first vision.

The history opens by saying that it is written to answer hostile reports, “being now [1838] the eighth year since the organization of the said Church” (JS—H 1:1–2), and one passage dates itself to 2 May 1838 (JS—H 1:60). According to the editors of the Joseph Smith Papers, a first draft of April and May 1838 does not survive; Smith began dictating again on 11 June 1839, and the manuscript volume cited here, which they call “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1”, was written by his scribes between then and August 1843. They add that he corrected its first forty-two pages himself. The volume runs from his birth in 1805 to August 1834.

It is a primary source for what Joseph Smith said of his own experience, set down between eighteen and eight years after the events it describes. It is not a contemporary record of them. Earlier and later accounts by Smith differ from it in detail; see History of Joseph Smith (about 1832) and Church History (the Wentworth letter).