I Need Some Help -- with Mormonism bibliography

[_Kishkumen]

He accomplishes more before breakfast than I've accomplished in 26 years.

Ditto.

[_moksha]

He accomplishes more before breakfast than I've accomplished in 26 years.

Bond, you need to eat more roughage then.

Best wishes Uncle Dale.

[_Uncle Dale]

I am overjoyed to discover that Uncle Dale is still hard at it.

Oh yes -- I occasionally crack open my overflowing filing
cabinets and spend an hour or two transcribing texts.

I'm kind of proud of this one --



http://www.olivercowdery.com/smithhome/1870s/1870mag1.htm

It's one of the several old "Chambers" articles on the
Mormons. They generally published nothing unique, but did
manage to keep up with the essentials on Mormonism, as
published in other sources.

I've added in the notes section, the response from William
Smith, younger brother of Joseph. It's rare to discover a
rebuttal on Mormon history, coming from the Smith family.
Although William says nothing new or important, it's still
interesting to see what accusations against the Mormons
bothered him enough to generate a response.

The Chambers article is also important, because it helped
spread the notion that Sidney Rigdon had been a printer
in his younger years -- and thus had access to useful
unpublished texts that might have been incorporated into
the Book of Mormon. There is no evidence that Rigdon
ever engaged in the printing trade -- so the oft-repeated
Chambers' accusation was evidently a false one. At any
rate, Rigdon got his "compositor" reputation from such
popular article reprints.

An entirely different series of articles tried to identify Rigdon
as a "journeyman printer;" which is pretty much the same
thing -- but using different language.

Mary -- if you're tuning in here, I'd appreciate knowing what
the earliest reference you can find on the web, for either of
these false reports -- "compositor" or "journeyman printer."

We can only produce useful commentary on early Mormonism,
by first of all clearing away all the mis-statements, errors
and other literary rubbish that has accumulated around this
topic throughout a dozen decades. It's a thankless task.

UD

[_MCB]

Dale, right now I am swimming the Mississippi with this subject:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3113

Like I said before, it was much more than polygamy, that was just the final straw. I think I found what I have been looking for the past ten years. Do you have anything interesting on that subject?

I have gleaned the autobiographies of Joseph Smith's contemporaries, the History of the Church, and the Times and Seasons. As well as a few articles on the subject.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
>Do you have anything interesting on that subject?
...

Malaria? Nauvoo Town Lots? Land speculation?
That sort of stuff was always a bit off my beaten track.

Sidney Rigdon's mother, Joe Smith's father, and the young
Don Carlos Smith all appear to have experienced the
consequences of riverside mosquito bites -- sad stuff.



Oh well -- anything for "The Kingdom," I guess...

UD

[_Mary]

Dale, I have been trawling through the web for 4/5 hours over the last couple of days and keep coming back to your site. I think you have cornered the market!!

Mary

[_MCB]

Malaria? Nauvoo Town Lots? Land speculation?
That sort of stuff was always a bit off my beaten track.

Sidney Rigdon's mother, Joe Smith's father, and the young
Don Carlos Smith all appear to have experienced the
consequences of riverside mosquito bites -- sad stuff.



Oh well -- anything for "The Kingdom," I guess...

UD

Amen to that. Very sad. Yes, I can use that last little bit of collating. You are second only to BH Roberts. Very sad that he was too dedicated to caste and polygamy to follow his conscience. Maybe it would have helped his drinking problem?

There is enough information available, that I doubt that you could collect much else.

I dreamed about that pesthole all night.