More documents from 1st Prez vault made available

[_Joe Geisner]

My understanding is the new History volume has a document that was turned over to the JSPP in 2005 by Pres. Hinckley. This item could have been in the Joseph Fielding Smith vault with the BCR, or maybe it was in the larger vault all along. I don't know.

This new document is being called the Howard Coray draft history. I do not have the book, so I may be wrong on this name, but it is in the section that has columns comparing manuscript histories.

The JSPP have now put up a helpful introduction to Coray's writing the history of Smith and also made available for the first time Coray's fair copy. This was also turned over in 2005. They have both the images of the document and a line by line transcription. This fair copy is 100 manuscript pages.

This is another huge development folks.

http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSumma ... -fair-copy

[_Madison54]

Thanks for posting this! It looks interesting and I will read it.

Just curious, but do you know if this man is related to the Coray who wrote the book: Fifteen Years Among the Mormons? (The author's maiden name was Coray....Mary Ettie V. Coray Smith.) It was her brother's wife (Martha Jane Coray) that was the scribe who wrote down Lucy Mack Smith's "memoirs". This is the history of Lucy that was published in England-- Brigham Young ordered all copies burned but some survived.

I will see what I can find too.

[_Joe Geisner]

Thanks for posting this! It looks interesting and I will read it.

Just curious, but do you know if this man is related to the Coray who wrote the book: Fifteen Years Among the Mormons? (The author's maiden name was Coray....Mary Ettie V. Coray Smith.) It was her brother's wife (Martha Jane Coray) that was the scribe who wrote down Lucy Mack Smith's "memoirs". This is the history of Lucy that was published in England-- Brigham Young ordered all copies burned but some survived.

I will see what I can find too.

You are correct Madison, Martha was Howard Coray's wife. They were very talented people and Smith picked up on this quickly.

[_Drifting]

This is another huge development folks.

Why?

[_Infymus]

Exactly WHY.

The Cult of the big 15 have learned their lessons. Nothing is released that isn't sanitized or faith promoting.

I expect nothing.

[_Willy Law]

Infymus, I know you have a list of the contents of the vault on your site somewhere. If you could have access to one document or item what would it be?
I think I would select Oliver Cowdery's journal. There must be some serious dirt in that thing to keep it locked down as they have.

Exactly WHY.

The Cult of the big 15 have learned their lessons. Nothing is released that isn't sanitized or faith promoting.

I expect nothing.

[_Equality]

Infymus, I know you have a list of the contents of the vault on your site somewhere. If you could have access to one document or item what would it be?
I think I would select Oliver Cowdery's journal. There must be some serious dirt in that thing to keep it locked down as they have.

I would want the Council of Fifty minutes from Nauvoo.

[_harmony]

I want the lost revelations.

[_Madison54]

Infymus, I know you have a list of the contents of the vault on your site somewhere. If you could have access to one document or item what would it be?
I think I would select Oliver Cowdery's journal. There must be some serious dirt in that thing to keep it locked down as they have.

I would want the Council of Fifty minutes from Nauvoo.

+1000

I've read that these are some of the most highly guarded documents in the vault.

Wasn't Quinn given access to them at one time? Seems I remember that he was (?).

[_Equality]

Wasn't Quinn given access to them at one time? Seems I remember that he was (?).

Nope:

Although the Council of Fifty no longer exists as an organized body,there remains one of its contributions which historically outweighs any practical influences the Council may have exerted. After 1845, the Council of Fifty focused primarily on immediate issues of the Mormon community—from exterminating wolves to preparing for elections. By contrast, in1844 and on occasion thereafter, the Council meetings departed from the immediate, often humdrum concerns of the temporal struggles of the Church.These minutes contain numerous discourses and instructions by Joseph Smith and others concerning the role of the U.S. Constitution in the present and millennial existence of the Latter-day Saints, the Nature of the all-encompassing Kingdom of God which the Council signified, and other crucial teachings that are in no other records than Council of Fifty minutes. For example, Benjamin F. Johnson reported that in the Council of Fifty meetings, Joseph Smith taught of “adopting the God Given Constatution [sic] of United States as a paladium of Liberty & eaqual [sic] Rights—But this of itself would Require a long Chapter.”
Both Benjamin F. Johnson and Orson Hyde affirmed that in a meeting of the Council of Fifty,Joseph Smith gave his famous charge to the Quorum of the Twelve to carry forth the Church and the Kingdom of God, which charge became the basis for the apostolic succession established after the death of Joseph Smith.
These teachings of Joseph Smith to the Council of Fifty, found nowhere else, fill hundreds of pages. On 16 March 1880, nearly 200 pages of the Council’s minutes concerning only its “origin and Organization” were read to President John Taylor, Joseph F. Smith, and Franklin D. Richards. Elder Richards recorded that the “whole reading was exceedingly interesting &wonderful to contemplate.” Joseph F. Smith wrote that the Prophet’s 1844 instructions to the Council of Fifty were “grand & god like.”

When Joseph Smith went to Carthage, Illinois, for his last imprisonment, the Church nearly lost these voluminous teachings of the Prophet to the Council of Fifty. Joseph Smith had already been charged by anti-Mormons with the ridiculous crime of treason for destroying the
Nauvoo Expositor as a public nuisance. He knew that the frenzied anti-Mormons of June 1844 were incapable of understanding the symbolic nature of the prophet-king ordinance or the millennial context of his teachings about the Kingdom of God. Therefore, Joseph Smith told William Clayton to either burn or bury the records of the Council of Fifty. William Clayton trusted that calmer, more reasonable and more secure times would come for the Latter-day Saints and therefore preserved the records for future generations.
Though not available at this time, those teachings of Joseph Smith and of his successors in the Council of Fifty are a far greater legacy to the Latter-day Saints than the often-mundane activities of the Council itself

D. Michael Quinn, The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844-1945, BYU Studies 20, no. 2 (1980), at 21-22

I'm not sure if Arrington ever had access, but I know that Bushman did not for RSR. Maybe someone more connected with the circle of Mormon historians could illuminate us on just who has seen them over the years.