Joseph Smith, founding prophet and martyr of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, personally wrote, dictated, or commissioned thousands of documents. Among these are several highly significant sources that scholars have used over and over again in their attempts to reconstruct the founding era of Mormonism, usually by focusing solely on content, without a deep appreciation for how and why a document was produced. This book offers case studies of the sources most often used by historians of the early Mormon experience. Each chapter takes a particular document as its primary subject, considering the production of a document as an historical event in itself, with its own background, purpose, circumstances, and consequences. The documents are examined not merely as sources of information but as artifacts that reflect aspects of the general culture and particular circumstances in which they were created. This book will help historians working in the founding era of Mormonism gain a more solid grounding in the period's documentary record by supplying important information on major primary sources.

From the earliest days, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints considered the keeping of records both a sacred command and a practical need.Robin Scott Jensen explores the Church Historian's Office against the backdrop of how writing and archiving what was written shaped the growth, faith, and identity of the nineteenth-century Latter Day Saint movement. As Jensen shows, records simultaneously created and preserved history. Journal keeping and letter writing stood alongside official documents as an essential means for Saints to understand their mission and place in American society. Over time, the Church Historian's Office evolved into a powerful institution that guided memory and authority by deciding what to collect, copy, or destroy. Jensen tells the stories of the forgotten archivists, many of them women, who built the Church Historian's Office, while revealing the choices and conflicts that led to Native and other voices being marginalized or erased.Detailed and candid, Archiving Heaven and Earth provides a rare look at a foundational organization.

Joseph Smith, founding prophet and martyr of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, personally wrote, dictated, or commissioned thousands of documents. Among these are several highly significant sources that scholars have used over and over again in their attempts to reconstruct the founding era of Mormonism, usually by focusing solely on content, without a deep appreciation for how and why a document was produced. This book offers case studies of the sources most often used by historians of the early Mormon experience. Each chapter takes a particular document as its primary subject, considering the production of a document as an historical event in itself, with its own background, purpose, circumstances, and consequences. The documents are examined not merely as sources of information but as artifacts that reflect aspects of the general culture and particular circumstances in which they were created. This book will help historians working in the founding era of Mormonism gain a more solid grounding in the period's documentary record by supplying important information on major primary sources.

From the earliest days, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints considered the keeping of records both a sacred command and a practical need.Robin Scott Jensen explores the Church Historian's Office against the backdrop of how writing and archiving what was written shaped the growth, faith, and identity of the nineteenth-century Latter Day Saint movement. As Jensen shows, records simultaneously created and preserved history. Journal keeping and letter writing stood alongside official documents as an essential means for Saints to understand their mission and place in American society. Over time, the Church Historian's Office evolved into a powerful institution that guided memory and authority by deciding what to collect, copy, or destroy. Jensen tells the stories of the forgotten archivists, many of them women, who built the Church Historian's Office, while revealing the choices and conflicts that led to Native and other voices being marginalized or erased.Detailed and candid, Archiving Heaven and Earth provides a rare look at a foundational organization.