On March 5, 2024, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Community of Christ jointly announced that “the responsibility and ownership for the Kirtland Temple (fig. 1), several historic buildings in Nauvoo, and various manuscripts and artifacts” had … Continued
At the beginning of 2023, the historic sites of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints featured twenty-five toured historic homes.1 That’s a lot of old houses. And the number recently increased by one. On August 29, 2023, the … Continued
January 1838, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, leaders of the Mormon church, used the cover of darkness to flee Kirtland, Ohio, with an angry mob at their heels. Behind them were disgruntled creditors, disillusioned Church members, and civil authorities who denounced them and sought to bring them to court. What had been a seemingly prosperous community made up largely of optimistic Mormons less than a year before was now torn with faction—a village which most planned to abandon.
Events leading up to the “Kirtland disaster” have been reviewed many times and are generally well-known. Prevailing historical interpretation holds that it was due to general economic collapse, which was precipitated by the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society Bank, a banking experiment initiated by Joseph Smith and others in fall 1836. It is generally held that the banking failure and the subsequent inability of Smith and his church to meet their economic obligations grew out of more complex causes: (1) Kirtland was not a viable economy—it was incapable of supporting either the rising population or the economic activities of the Church leaders. (2) Smith and other leaders were involved in reckless land speculation. (3) Smith was hopelessly and irresponsibly in debt.
It is our contention that moral judgments upon Mormonism have obscured the real story of what happened to the Kirtland economy. Our argument is based upon the premise that the voluntary nature of market transactions imposes constraints upon behavior—that creditors demand assets or they refuse to make loans, and buyers and sellers expect fair market prices or they do not trade. We think the evidence demonstrates that these principles operated at Kirtland, and believe that all parties to the buseiness arrangements in question participated because they believed that they would benefit from the results. Previous historical accounts of the Kirtland economy have overlooked the fact that Smith provided his creditors with assets, that he was buying and selling land at market prices, and that the economic reversals in Kirtland involved a change in conditions that “reasonably prudent” economic men probably would not have anticipated. Numerous tables and graphs, along with appendixes including information such as the stock ledger from the Kirtland Safety Society, are included to support the exhaustive research of this article.
After learning of the significant increase in Church membership in Ohio during the winter of 1830–1831, many ask why the conversions were so numerous in that section of America. Why was the Western Reserve such a fruitful field ready to harvest at the beginning of the 1830s? An examination of the religious conditions in Kirtland and vicinity in 1830 provides one key describing the fertile conditions prevailing there then. Immediately prior to the introduction of Mormonism in the Western Reserve, four Christian societies worshipped in Kirtland—Congregationalists, Methodists, Regular Baptists, and a group sometimes called “reformers” who were not affiliated with any denomination but were seeking a return to New Testament Christianity. As clearly enunciated in many revelations recorded by the Prophet Joseph Smith, the field was white, all ready to harvest, and one of the most fruitful fields in the early nineteenth century was northeastern Ohio.
The diary of Wilford Woodruff, fourth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is one of the significant documents of Mormon history. Covering the years from his acceptance of the faith in 1833 until his death in 1898, President Woodruff’s diary offers a keenly perceptive view of life in the early Church from the perspective of a leading official. Joining the Church during the Kirtland era, Woodruff’s rise to leadership was almost immediate. He was appointed to the seventies quorum in Kirtland in 1836 and two years later was called to the Council of Twelve Apostles—a calling that culminated with his appointment as President of the Church in 1889. He also served as Church Historian for thirty-three years and was president of the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association. Among his civic assignments, Wilford Woodruff sat with the Nauvoo City Council, the Utah Territorial Legislature, and was president of the Utah Horticultural Society.
The Kirtland Temple stands to this day as a physical link with the Church’s beginnings—the first of first temples. It became a place of revelation, communion, inspired learning—a place of awe and joy. Today millions revere it as a place of sacred awakening, and above all, a House of God. As a prelude to endowment, the Kirtland Temple served as a place to receive those keys necessary for these unfolding powers which the Prophet taught were essential to a fullness of the glory of God. The details of the marvelous structure of the temple are referenced in early revelations and drawings.
As a witness of significant events in the rise of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Oliver Cowdery’s importance is superseded only by that of the Prophet Joseph Smith. With the exception of Joseph’s First Vision and the appearances of Moroni, Cowdery participated with the Prophet in the key events of the Restoration. The scope of his experiences include the translation of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the Priesthood, the organization of the Church, the first extensive missionary work of the Church, and divine manifestations in the Kirtland Temple.
The youngest of eight children, Oliver Cowdery was born 3 October 1806 in Wells, Rutland County, Vermont. In 1825 he moved to New York, where he worked successively as a clerk in a general store, as a blacksmith, and as a farmer. In 1828 he entered the teaching profession in Manchester, New York, where he first became acquainted with the religious claims of Joseph Smith. His entry into the mainstream of Mormon history occurred in April 1829 when he traveled to Harmony, Pennsylvania, to meet Joseph Smith, who was engaged in the translation of the Book of Mormon. Cowdery assisted Joseph as a scribe during the translation of the major part of that work, and his name appears in the Book of Mormon as one of the witnesses to the reliability of the claims of Joseph Smith regarding its origin and method of translation.
A previously unreported stock ledger book of the Kirtland Safety Society was recently discovered among the papers in the Mormon collection of the Chicago Historical Society. The ledger, which contains an alphabetical index of names and 287 account pages, is unquestionably authentic and carries the accounts of 205 members of the Church at Kirtland, including most of the Church’s leaders.
Whether the stock credited in the ledger was actually distributed is doubtful, because no specimen of such stock has come to light and no diaries report such. Whether the subscribers received bank notes in return for their subscriptions is also not known. This may have been the method by which the notes were placed in circulation, though the ledger does not tell us explicitly what the relationship was between bank payments and Kirtland Bank notes. It does, however, indicate that there was some relationship. Just how much Kirtland money was in circulation is still unknown.
The argument over the Kirtland Safety Society is typical of historical discussions in which much is made about the “facts” of a situation. It is as if the truth were somewhere “out there” and if we could somehow manage to separate fact from opinion, we would know what really happened. This idea neglects to consider the point that the facts of history seldom come to us in pure form, since they are always filtered through the mind of the historian who wrote them. There are no “facts” waiting in splendid isolation for discovery by the historian, but only the observations of earlier writers who had their own prejudices. Thus, the anti-Mormon writer who sees the “facts” as damning to the Church and the pro-Mormon writer who sees them as further proof of the validity of his own argument might be wise in working to obtain a broader perspective of the problem in order to reevaluate that which they have come to accept as fact. The purpose of this paper is to reexamine the story of the Kirtland Safety Society.
This article will attempt to look at the Church in the early 1830s and, so far as it is possible, will trace the introduction of several important doctrinal concepts into the Church during that time. In this context we will discuss the role of new translation of the Bible in the restoration of the gospel in this dispensation. When speaking of the “development” of the Church doctrine, we do not mean particularly to dwell on an evolutionary phenomena but rather simply to emphasize that all of the doctrines were not revealed at once and that there has been a developmental increase of doctrine from continuing revelation. It is in the spirit of this principle that we trace the historical relationship that exists between Joseph Smith’s new translation of the Bible and the increase of doctrine during the Kirtland period.
