Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, Volume Two, 1848–1852 (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center Brigham Young University, 2005), 27–68.

346 General epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints abroad, dispersed throughout the earth, greeting: [Caption title] [At end:] Written at Winter Quarters, Omaha Nation, west bank of Missouri River, near Council Bluffs, North America, and signed December 23d, 1847, in behalf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Brigham Young, President. Willard Richards, Clerk. [St. Louis, 1848]

8 pp. 25 cm.

General Epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles marks the beginning of Mormonism’s Utah period. Issued fifty-three days after Brigham Young and most of the Twelve returned to Winter Quarters following their trek to the Great Salt Lake Valley, it opens with an account of the evacuation of Nauvoo, the settling of the Iowa camps, the call of the Mormon Battalion, and the overland journey of the pioneer company. It announces the establishment of a new home for the Latter-day Saints, describes the Salt Lake Valley, and calls upon the Saints to gather “on the east side of the Missouri River, and, if possible, be ready to start from hence by the first of May next, or as soon as grass is sufficiently grown, and go to the Great Salt Lake City.” It counsels those unable to move to the Valley the following summer to settle for a time near Council Bluffs, urges the European Saints to immigrate speedily, by way of New Orleans to the Bluffs, and asks all those coming west to bring whatever seeds, plants, livestock, tools, machinery, books, maps, charts, and scientific instruments they can to the Valley.¹

The epistle also speaks of “having it in contemplation soon to reorganize the Church according to the original pattern, with a First Presidency and Patriarch.” In fact, on December 5, at Orson Hyde’s house near Council Bluffs, Brigham Young and eight members of the Twelve had reorganized the First Presidency with Brigham Young, president, and Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards, his counselors, and the following day had called John Smith as patriarch. Eighteen days later, the day after they issued the epistle, they convened a four-day general conference at Council Bluffs during which Young, Kimball, Richards, and Smith were sustained by the congregation.²

During the latter part of November 1847, Orson Pratt, Wilford Woodruff and George A. Smith, and Ezra T. Benson submitted suggestions for the epistle to Willard Richards, and on December 16 at 11 p.m. he began dictating it to Robert L. Campbell, finishing it at 8 a.m. the following morning. The draft was discussed at a meeting of the Twelve later that day and again on the 19th and 21st. Richards and Thomas Bullock worked together on revisions over three days, December 20–22.³ The manuscript was handed to Amasa Lyman and Ezra T. Benson, who in company with William I. Appleby, Erastus Snow, James H. Flanigan, and others, left Council Bluffs for the East on December 28, and on January 14, Lyman, Benson, Snow, and Appleby reached St. Louis.⁴ Three days later, from St. Louis, Benson and Appleby wrote to Brigham Young that they had “five hundred copies of the Epistle already struck off” and were getting 3,000 printed at a cost of about $30. Appleby had “attended to the printing” and had read the proof; the costs were being paid out of donations from the St. Louis branch. Lyman notes in his journal that the printing was done at the shop of the St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican.⁵ The Republican ran the full text of the epistle in its issue of January 19 along with an editorial comment, and the epistle was reprinted in the Millennial Star of March 15, 1848, and in a small pamphlet edition from the Star setting (item 352).

The Strangite Gospel Herald reprinted the epistle in its issues for February 24 and March 2, 1848, and ran a serial response to it on March 2, 9, 23, 30, and April 20. John E. Page stated in the Herald of August 31: “I have before me at this time Brigham Young’s epistle, of which there were 1,000 copies printed in Chicago while I was there last June, the same that was published in the Herald a short time since.”⁶ No copy of such an edition is located, nor is it known whether it was an LDS or a Strangite publication.

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347 SPENCER, Orson. Letters exhibiting the most prominent doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By Orson Spencer, A.B., president of the Church of Jesus Christ of L.D.S., in Europe. In reply to the Rev. William Crowell, A.M., Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. [1 line] Liverpool: Published by Orson Spencer, 39, Torbock Street. 1848.

viii[1]–244 pp. 15 cm.

Orson Spencer’s Letters is the first of the major synthetic works—an important book that went through seven hardback editions before the end of the century (see items 334­­–35, 736). It collates: title page, with Liverpool: Printed by R. James, South Castle Street on the verso (pp. [i]–[ii]); table of contents (pp. [iii]–iv); and preface (pp. [v]–viii). Then the main text: Letter from the Rev. William Crowell, A.M. to Orson Spencer, A.B. (pp. [1]–4); Letters in Reply by Orson Spencer A.B. (pp. [5]–223); Farewell Address (pp. 224–31); Night of Martyrdom (pp. 232–238); Death of the Author’s Wife (pp. 238–42); and Lines, Suggested on reading the Author’s first Letter in the Series. By Miss E. R. Snow (pp. 242–44).

The preface, signed and dated January 1, 1848, notes that the “present volume constitutes the third reprint, several thousand copies having been exhausted in a tract form”—a reference to the two pamphlet editions of the preceding year (items 334, 335). Crowell’s letter and the first twelve of Spencer’s letters are those of the second pamphlet series (item 335). Letters adds two new letters: Letter XIII. Miscellaneous Remarks on Restitution, dated at Liverpool, November 30, 1847, and Letter XIV. Summary and Final Appeal, dated at Liverpool, December 13, 1847. And here in this “third reprint” Spencer finally employs the correct spelling of William Crowell’s name (see items 334–35).

Letter XIII begins with an expression of Spencer’s opinion that children will be resurrected with children’s bodies and will mature after their resurrection. It then discusses the concept of baptism for the dead and argues that the “union of families” will be the fundamental governing unit in the hereafter. The Saints, it continues, “will need houses for their persons, and for their families, as much in their resurrected condition as in their present state; they will be as sensible of the works of art, taste, beauty and grandeur there as now, and far more so”—echoing Parley Pratt’s essay “Immortality of the Body” (item 202). Letter XIV opens with a discussion of the diversity of religious belief in the world and then defends the character of the Latter-day Saints, arguing that they alone adhere to the religion of the Bible—“the faith of visions, miracles, angels, revelations, and prophets.” It expostulates on the “bloody character of modern christianity” and charges that “Free Republican Christianity” was responsible for the violence against the Saints.

Dated at the beginning, Liverpool, December 20, 1847, Farewell Address expresses Spencer’s love for his country but warns America that it invites the judgment of God unless it redresses the Latter-day Saints’ losses. This does not seem to be in any other source except the 1852 and 1866 editions. One might conjecture that it was dropped from the editions subsequent to 1866 because of the Civil War, which some of the Church leaders viewed as such a judgment.¹ Spencer’s Night of Martyrdom is a commentary on the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, first published in the Millennial Star of February 15 and April 1, 1847, with only the first installment included in the book. Death of the Author’s Wife was taken from his tribute in the Star of February 15, 1847, to his wife Catherine—who died in Iowa on March 12, 1846, at the age of “thirty-five years, wanting nine days.”

Eliza R. Snow’s poem, “Lines, Suggested on Reading the Author’s First Letter in the Series,” was printed in the Times and Seasons of January 2, 1843, and in the Star of July 1843, with the title “Saturday Evening Thoughts”; in the Mormon of June 23, 1855, with the title “Lines, Suggested on Reading the First of ‘Spencer’s Letters’”; and in her Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political (Liverpool, 1856), pp. 3–6, with the title “Evening Thoughts, or What it is to be a Saint.” A few of its lines: “It is no trifling thing to be a Saint / In very deed. To stand upright, nor bow / Nor bend beneath the weighty burthen of / Oppressiveness.—To stand unscath’d amid / The bellowing thunders and raging storm.”

Spencer reported in 1849 that he had published Letters in an edition of 3,000.² The book was advertised as “now ready for sale” in the Star for January 1, 1848, at a wholesale price of 1s. 6d. each for copies in cloth and 4s. each for copies “handsomely bound in morocco, gilt edges, similar to the best bound Hymn Books.” Six weeks later the Star reminded its readers that the retail price was 1s. 8d. for copies in cloth and 4s. 2d. for “best bound” copies. By September 1850 it was out of print.³

Original bindings include: blue, brown, or green blind-stamped cloth with an arabesque within a ruled border on the front and back covers, blind-stamped ruled bands and gilt title on the backstrip, and plain or coated endsheets; blue or brown blind-stamped diagonally ribbed cloth with decorative corner elements inside a ruled border on the covers, blind-stamped bands and gilt title on the backstrip, and plain or coated endsheets; three-quarter black calf with green embossed cloth-covered boards; black grained morocco with a wide gilt ornamental border on the covers, gilt-decorated panels and the gilt title between raised bands on the backstrip, gilt edges, and yellow coated endsheets.

In 1853 Orson Spencer published a fifteenth letter in tract form, Patriarchal Order, or Plurality of Wives! This was added to the 1874 edition of Letters and maintained in the subsequent editions.

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348 LYON, John. Address to Franklin D. and Samuel W. Richards, brothers, on leaving their field of labour for the Camp of Israel, February 15th, 1848. [At bottom, left:] Kilmarnock. [At bottom, right:] Lyon. [Liverpool, 1848]

Broadside 22.5 x 14.5 cm. Ornamental border.

Dated five days before Franklin D. Richards and Samuel W. Richards sailed from England with a company of Mormon emigrants, John Lyon’s Address is a poem in fifty-four lines, rhyming in couplets, which bids a loving farewell to the two brothers and implores them to always remember Scotland. Near the end it sends regards to Brigham Young, the Twelve, and Eliza R. Snow. Its first four lines: “Farewell! beloved of the Lord, farewell— / In Scotland’s name, a Scot, would dare to tell / How much we’ve prized your labours since you came, / Though now you leave for lands of brighter fame.” The poem is also printed in the Millennial Star of March 1, 1848, and in Lyon’s Harp of Zion (Liverpool, 1853), pp. 17–19. The broadside setting is that of the Star, indicating that the broadside was struck off by Richard James in Liverpool, probably in February just before Franklin and Samuel left England. The day before Christmas, in Salt Lake City, Franklin presented a copy to Eliza R. Snow, in the presence of Brigham Young, and three and a half weeks later Young gave Franklin a copy of Eliza’s poem written in response, “To Elder Franklin D. Richards, On His First Return from Europe”—later published in the first volume of her Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political, pp. 210–12.¹

The Richards brothers were sent to labor in Scotland soon after they arrived in Great Britain, October 14, 1846 (see items 71, 331). The following January, Franklin was called to be Orson Spencer’s counselor in the presidency of the British Mission, and subsequently Samuel was appointed president of the Glasgow Conference—which included the branch at Kilmarnock over which John Lyon presided. Samuel himself published a poem in the Star of February 1, 1848, “Lines Dedicated to the Scottish Saints,” which may have prompted Lyon’s Address.²

John Lyon was born in Glasgow, March 4, 1803. As a young man he moved to Kilmarnock and there converted to Mormonism in 1844. In the early 1850s he served successive terms as president of the Worcestershire and Glasgow conferences and then immigrated to Utah in 1853 (see items 650, 706, 754). It was his poetry, however, that brought him to prominence among the Saints. More than thirty of his pieces were printed in the Star before he left for America, eight of his hymns were added to the 1851 hymnal, and in 1853 Samuel W. Richards published a large collection of his poems, the Harp of Zion. The day after his death in Salt Lake City on November 28, 1889, the Deseret Evening News commented, “It is rare that Death lays his hand upon one who, without special official position in the Church, was so widely known personally or by reputation as Father John Lyon.”³

Flake-Draper 5066b. USlC.

349 JONES, Dan. Adolygiad ar ddarlith olaf y Parch. E. Roberts, Rymini, yn erbyn “Mormoniaeth.” [Caption title] [A review of the last lecture of the Rev. E. Roberts, Rhymney, against “Mormonism.”] [At foot of p. 12:] Argraffwyd gan John Jones, Rhydybont. [Printed by John Jones, Rhydybont.] [1848]

12 pp. 17 cm.

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350 O bit o tauk between two berry chaps, obeawt th’ Latter-day Saints, un th’ Christion Magozeen, exhibitin th’ church us it awt to be, un so on. Bury: Printed by Dennis Barker, Union Street, 1848.

8 pp. 18.5 cm.

O Bit o Tauk is an anonymous tract, prompted by a six-part article in The Christian Magazine for January–June 1848. Although unsigned, this six-part article was written by John Bowes, the magazine’s publisher, and was an early version of his pamphlet Mormonism Exposed (London: E. Ward, 1849?). For both his article and his pamphlet Bowes drew on the familiar anti-Mormon books, including Joshua V. Himes’s Mormon Delusions and Monstrosities, William Harris’s Mormonism Portrayed, E. D. Howe’s Mormonism Unvailed, Edward Brotherton’s Mormonism; Its Rise and Progress, and John C. Bennett’s History of the Saints, and broadly attacked the character of Joseph Smith and the doctrines and practices of Mormonism.¹

O Bit o Tauk actually responds to just two paragraphs in the second installment of the article which quote Mormonism Unvailed that the Book of Mormon was based on the Spaulding Manuscript (see item 77). Cast as a dialogue, in dialect, between “Tummus” and “Jim,” it attempts to refute this idea by arguing that Joseph Smith was too young to have come in contact with the manuscript and by repeating the attack on D. P. Hurlbut’s character in Benjamin Winchester’s Origin of the Spaulding Story or his Plain Facts, Shewing the Origin of the Spaulding Story (items 77, 114). An example: “J.—Aw tel the whot Tummus, aw think sich loik chaps us th’ editor o’th Christion Magozeen o’l stond o poor chonce o makin foak beleev us th’ book o mormon wor made eawt ove o novel. T.—O very poor chonce Jim, but there’s sommut else ut aw want the to look at, neaw this romance ut thers bin so mitch tauk obeawt wor ritten e 1812 the noas, un Joseph Smith wor born oth’ 23rd o December, A.D. 1805, so he wod nobut be 7 year owd when this novel wur ritten.” The lines in the tract’s title, exhibitin th’ church us it awt to be, un so on, refer to the subtitle of The Christian Magazine: “Exhibiting The Church as it ought to be, ‘speaking the truth in love.’”

It is not a strong response—and likely was not written by one of the more prominent Mormon pamphleteers. One possibility for its author is John Robinson, who was born in Bury, converted to Mormonism there in 1845, and wrote to the Millennial Star about his missionary activity in Bury in January 1848. Robinson went on to preside over the Cheltenham and London conferences, and in 1855 he and his family immigrated to Utah; five years later he settled in Richmond, Cache County, where he died February 11, 1879, three days before his fifty-fifth birthday.² Another possibility is “J. H.,” the writer of the Bury tract Mormonism Triumphant! (item 487), also printed by Dennis Barker of Union Street. Who J. H. was, however, is not known.

Shortly after it appeared, Bowes’s pamphlet drew a response from Thomas Smith, of Leamington (see item 456).

Flake-Draper 537. UPB, USlC.

351 SMITH, Thomas. [Handbill advertising two lectures in Banbury, March 12, 1848. Leamington? 1848]

Thomas Smith, of Leamington, was still presiding over the Warwickshire Conference when he issued this handbill, no copy of which is located (see items 138, 338, 390, 400, 431, 447).¹ On March 5, 1848, according to his journal, he attended an afternoon meeting in Leamington and preached there that night on the gathering. At this point, he writes, “got some bills printed for two lectures [at] Banbury.” He remained in Leamington the next two days and went to Banbury on March 11. The following day he “Lectured twice in a Room at Banbury two good meetings. In the afternoon was interupted by a Methodist preacher named Fletcher.” Apparently the handbill advertised only the meetings on the 12th, for he did not return to Banbury during March or April.²

352 General epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, abroad, dispersed throughout the earth, greeting: [Caption title] [At end:] Written at Winter Quarters, Omaha Nation, west bank of Missouri River, near Council Bluffs, North America, and signed December 23d, 1847, in behalf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Brigham Young, President. Willard Richards, Clerk. [At foot of p. 8:] Printed by R. James, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1848]

8 pp. 20.5 cm.

The December 23, 1847, general epistle of the Twelve (item 346) was reprinted in the Millennial Star of March 15, 1848, and “a few hundred copies” in tract form were struck off from the Star setting—advertised in the same issue at one penny each. This Liverpool edition is textually identical to the St. Louis edition, except for the changes in three words and a three-word phrase, the deletion of one word, and fifteen changes in punctuation and capitalization—all insignificant modifications.

Flake-Draper 1508. CtY, CU-B, NjP, UHi, UPB, USlC.

353 [Placard announcing a conference in the Hall of Science, Sheffield, on March 26, 1848. Sheffield? 1848]

The only reference to this placard is in a letter from Crandall Dunn to Orson Spencer of March 28, 1848, in the Millennial Star of April 15:

Our conference was held on the 26th ult. [sic] 145 had been baptized during the last three months; the prospects are cheering for the coming season; the branches were represented in good standing. Life and animation characterises the elders and officers through; but greatly disappointed in not having your company on Sunday last. We got the town placarded announcing our meetings, and likewise the expectation of Elder Orson Spencer; the result was our hall was filled with attentive hearers to the reports from various parts. Elder Bradshaw, from Bradford Conference, was present and addressed the congregation in the evening.

Dunn’s diary makes it clear that the conference was held in the Sheffield Hall of Science on Sunday, March 26.¹

Crandall (or Crandell) Dunn and his wife arrived in England in September 1846, and eleven months later he was assigned to preside over the Sheffield Conference, where he served until January 1850, when he assumed the presidency of the Edinburgh Conference. He remained in Edinburgh for a about a year and then sailed for America in January 1851 (see items 310, 444, 486, 491, 497, 537).²

354 CLAYTON, William. The Latter-day Saints’ emigrants’ guide: being a table of distances, showing all the springs, creeks, rivers, hills, mountains, camping places, and all other notable places, from Council Bluffs, to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Also, the latitudes, longitudes and altitudes of the prominent points on the route. Together with remarks on the nature of the land, timber, grass, &c. The whole route having been carefully measured by a roadometer, and the distance from point to point, in English miles, accurately shown. By W. Clayton. St. Louis: Mo. Republican Steam Power Press—Chambers & Knapp. 1848.

24 pp. 19 cm. Tan or blue plain wrappers.

William Clayton left Winter Quarters on April 14, 1847, to join the pioneer company on its momentous trek to the Great Salt Lake Valley and that day began a chronicle of the trip in his daily diary. For the first three weeks he simply estimated the distance of each day’s travel, but the inaccuracy of these guesses troubled him, and as early as April 19 he spoke with Orson Pratt about the possibility of devising an odometer to actually measure the distances, an idea he also promoted among the members of the company. On April 26 Brigham Young assigned him to assist Thomas Bullock in keeping a record of the trip, and on May 8 he began to calculate the distances by tediously counting the revolutions of a wagon wheel. Two days later Young asked Orson Pratt to design an odometer along the lines Clayton had suggested, and that afternoon Pratt handed his plan to Appleton M. Harmon, who had a working model by May 12 and a finished machine by the 16th.¹

While Clayton tabulated distances and he and Bullock kept notes on the terrain, Orson Pratt determined latitudes and longitudes, altitudes, and temperatures with a set of instruments brought from England, and on May 18 he and Clayton met with Willard Richards, who asked Clayton to mark the pioneer route on a copy of the Frémont-Preuss map, together with the various distances, features of the terrain, and Pratt’s measurements—a signal that the record was to be put in some form for the use of later Mormon immigrants. But Clayton soon found that the map did not conform with their observations and suggested that they collect the data and make a new map after the journey’s end. On July 3 Bullock combined a “Synopsis of [his] Journal from Fort John to Green River” with a “table of distances between creeks & Camp grounds” made out by Clayton, “a troublesome job”; six weeks later he copied “the table of distances, observations &c by W. Clayton from Winter Quarters to Great Salt Lake City.”²

Brigham Young’s interest in the Clayton-Bullock-Pratt record is made clear by his request on August 2 that Clayton travel back to Winter Quarters with the ox team company and again measure the distances with a new odometer to be made by William A. King. Two days later King commenced working on the new device and finished it on August 7.³ Clayton began the return trip on August 17 and arrived at Winter Quarters on October 21. “I have succeeded in measuring the whole distance from the City of the Great Salt Lake to this place,” he wrote in his journal,

except a few miles between Horse Creek and the A La Bonte River which was taken from the measurement going up. I find the whole distance to be 1032 miles and am now prepared to make a complete traveler’s guide from here to Great Salt Lake, having been careful in taking the distance from creek to creek, over bluffs, mountains, etc. It has required much time and care and I have continually labored under disadvantages in consequence of the companies feeling no interest in it.⁴

Three and a half weeks after he reached Winter Quarters, Clayton wrote to Brigham Young about his “Table of Distances,” asking for any suggestions and for permission to publish it as a profit-making venture. Receiving no response, he wrote again on February 7, 1848, that he was planning to go to St. Louis with Lucius N. Scovil to try to get his table of distances printed and asked for Young’s approval and for letters of introduction including one to the presiding elder in St. Louis. The following day Brigham Young wrote letters to Nathaniel H. Felt in St. Louis, and others, which indicated his support of Clayton’s undertaking and asked for Felt’s financial assistance.⁵ Unknown to them, of course, was the discovery of gold at Sutter’s mill on January 24, an event that would transform the market for Clayton’s book.

Clayton left for St. Louis with Scovil on February 10 and arrived there on the 29th. By March 7 he had arranged with the shop of the Daily Missouri Republican to print 5,000 copies of his book, and on the 28th Felt wrote to Brigham Young that Clayton’s Guide was out of press but the means to pay the printer had not yet been found. Apparently the funds were collected soon after, for on June 2, at the Elkhorn ferry, Thomas Bullock got one hundred copies of the guide from Clayton and sold them throughout the camp to the Mormons about to make the overland trek.⁶

Clayton’s Guide was also the most popular guidebook among the California gold seekers. J. Goldsborough Bruff used it in 1849, for example, as did Byron N. McKinstry, Madison B. Moorman, and Silas Newcomb in 1850.⁷ One overland traveler claimed in the Missouri Republican of October 3, 1849, that copies had sold for as much as $5 and that he would not take less than $2 each for a few that he had.⁸ But its highest—albeit backhanded—compliments came from those who plagiarized it. Joseph E. Ware’s The Emigrants’s Guide to California (St. Louis, 1849) and Philip L. Platt and Nelson Slater’s The Travelers’ Guide Across the Plains, Upon the Overland Route to California (Chicago, 1852), for instance, both borrowed from it without credit, although Platt and Slater did mention in their preface that “the best [guidebook] we saw was that prepared by Mr. W. Clayton.”⁹

A two-line copyright notice occupies the verso of the title page of Clayton’s Guide, followed by a preface dated at St. Louis, March 13, 1848 (p. [3]), and an Explanation of how to use the guide (p. 4). Pages 5–20 consist of a table in four columns. The first column, headed Prominent Points and Remarks, lists the sequence of camps and landmarks together with certain physical features, the nature of the road or the quality of the camp, and occasionally the latitude, longitude, or altitude; the second column, headed Dist. miles, gives the distance to the camp from the preceding one; the third, headed From W Qrs. miles, gives the distance from Winter Quarters to the camp; and the fourth, headed From C of GSL miles, lists the distance from the camp to Salt Lake City. Although Clayton noted in his journal that “the whole distance [was] 1032 miles,” his guide shows this as 1031 miles. A brief description of the Salt Lake Valley is included on pp. 20–21, and pp. 22–24 have nine notes, numbered with roman numerals, with fuller discussions for nine of the landmarks.

Consisting of a sixteen-page signature followed by an eight-page signature, the book was originally issued in tan or blue plain wrappers, with a few specially bound copies in sheep. The Brigham Young University copy is bound in full brown mottled sheep with N. K. Whitney in gilt on the front cover and a filler of lined note paper bound in at the end. The LDS Church has similar copies for John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Amasa Lyman, and the Newberry Library has one for Parley P. Pratt.

Although he published his guide as a profit-making venture, it appears Clayton derived little financial benefit from it. The Frontier Guardian of February 7, 1851, which advertised copies for sale, mentions that even though he had published a large edition, “other men speculated upon them, and he, a poor man, is left unrewarded for his toil.” Despite the fact that a notice of a copyright is printed in his book, it seems clear that he did not obtain one. Under the date November 26, 1852, he notes in his journal:

A new edition of the guide has been printed by Fisher and Bennet [of St. Louis], which they are selling at 50 cents each. I offered to sell them the copyright, but they considered themselves perfectly safe without it. I had not the money to secure it myself, and had to leave it to do as they saw proper. I intend however, if all right, to print it in England, and as near all the emigration will hereforth come through England, I am in hopes to spoil their speculation.¹⁰

No other evidence for an 1852 edition is known, and there is some doubt that such an edition was actually printed. Nor, as far as it is known, did Clayton reprint his guide in England.¹¹

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355 [Handbill advertising lectures by John Banks in the Bethel Chapel. London? 1848]

The only record of this unlocated handbill comes from the reminiscences of William Willes—who, four years after he saw the bill, distinguished himself as a missionary in India (see items 739–40):

In the spring of 1848 I saw a small handbill on the wall which gave notice of a sermon to be delivered by an “Elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” in a little weatherbeaten old chapel that John Bunyon and John Wesley had preached in, called the Bethel Chapel. When I saw the word “Saint” on the bill, it seemed to me little short of blasphemy for people in this enlightened age to make use of this term, however, I was determined to go and hear him and was both surprised and pleased with his remarks. His name was John Banks, at that time President of the London Conference, who just suited me to a “T”, and I went and heard him in the evening with increasing pleasure and satisfaction and thought what a privilege it would be to always attend his ministry. So on the next Sunday I went to the same place, but he was not there, and an elderly man of inferior ability who failed to please me as Elder Banks had done. But not to be discouraged, I attended the next Sunday, when another of less talent than the second one spoke, which so discouraged me that I gave up attending and was left to my own indefinite and ignorant ways and means.

Despite this unpromising start, Willes attended the Latter-day Saint meetings again, and on October 20, 1848, he was baptized in the River Thames by Thomas Bradshaw (see item 449).¹

John Banks, according to Andrew Jenson, was “one of the ablest and most eloquent local missionaries of the British Mission.” Born in Lancashire, February 6, 1806, he was baptized into the Church by Parley Pratt in 1841 and called to preside over the Preston Conference three years later. During 1845 he was president of the Edinburgh Conference and then Reuben Hedlock’s counselor in the mission presidency until October 1846; the following year he became president of the London Conference, serving until December 1849. He immigrated to Utah in 1850, and for almost two years, 1851–53, was an assistant presiding and traveling bishop (see item 744). In 1861 he aligned himself with Joseph Morris, acting as Morris’s counselor and official spokesman, and when territorial officers raided the Morrisite community at South Weber in June 1862, he was killed along with Morris and several others.²

356 APPLEBY, William Ivins. Lines, suggested and composed on the present state of the world, by W. I. Appleby, elder in the Church of Latter-day Saints. [Dated at end:] Philadelphia, May 1, 1848. [At foot below border:] Bicking & Guilbert, Printers, No. 56 North Third Street, 2nd building above Arch. [Philadelphia, 1848?]

Broadside 33.5 x 24. Text in three columns, ornamental border.

William I. Appleby’s Lines Suggested and Composed on the Present State of the World is a poem in forty-one numbered four-line verses that laments the evil and strife in the world while anticipating a time of justice and peace with the coming of the Messiah. Twenty-seven footnotes at the bottom identify some of the events alluded to in the poem. Its first verse: “How vain this lower world appears, / When we the same survey;— / A world of strife, of hopes and cares / Strew’d ’long life’s thorny way.”

Appleby reached his home in Recklesstown, New Jersey, on February 1, 1848, following his visit to Council Bluffs in December, and immediately began to travel about the region raising money for the relief of the Saints in the Iowa camps (see item 325). At the same time he began to record natural catastrophes, incidents of political turmoil, and sensational crimes in his journal, and about four months later he commenced a manuscript entitled “History of the Signs of the Times,” which incorporated these events.¹ These he viewed as harbingers of the Second Advent—which he had concluded in his Dissertation on Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream (item 230) would occur about 1871.

During the last week of April, in Philadelphia, he developed a severe cold as well as a swollen and painful foot, which confined him to a Church member’s home for several days. But, he noted in his journal, “My mind I wish to have engaged in things that will benefit myself, my posterity, and my fellow man,” and on the 29th he wrote “Lines Suggested and Composed on the Present State of the World.” He transcribed the poem in his journal, and transcribed it again in “History of the Signs of the Times” with the explanation that it was “a recapitulation, in Poetry, of the scenes [he had] been recording.”² Each of these versions includes a verse deleted in the broadside: “Our Rulers now without restraint: / Upon our rights intrude—. / ‘The head’s diseas’d, the body’s faint.’ / For want of proper food.”³ Who published the poem or when it was printed is not known. But since the broadside is dated two days after he composed the poem, one might guess that Appleby published it himself about May 1, 1848.

Flake-Draper 190. USlC.

357 SPENCER, Orson. The gospel witness. [Caption title] [Dated at end:] Liverpool, July 1, 1848. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1848]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

358 SPENCER, Orson. The gospel witness. [Caption title] [Dated at end:] Liverpool, July 1, 1848. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [Liverpool, 1848?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

359 SPENCER, Orson. Character!! [Caption title] [At foot of p. 4:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1848]

4 pp. 21.5 cm.

360 SPENCER, Orson. Character!!! [Caption title] [At foot of p. 4:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [Liverpool, 1848?]

4 pp. 21.5 cm.

Orson Spencer had served as the president of the British Mission for seventeen months when he first issued the Gospel Witness and Character!! in pamphlet form (see items 334–35). He advertised the two tracts in the Millennial Star for July 1, 1848—the first at 5s. per hundred, the second at 2s. 6d. per hundred. Both seem to have been prompted by the attacks of the sectarian clergy, which were especially vigorous at that point.

Spencer published the first four and three-quarter pages of the Gospel Witness in the Star of June 1 and the next two and a quarter pages—the remainder of the tract except for the last page—in the Star of June 15. The first seven pages of the first pamphlet edition (item 357) were printed from the Star setting—with the change of two capital letters and a slight rearranging of the text at the end.

The second edition (item 358) is distinguished from the first by the absence of Liverpool in the colophon. It is textually identical to the first, except for the deletion of a in the third line from the bottom of p. 6, the correction of exerted to rejected in the final paragraph, and a number of improvements in punctuation and capitalization.

Most of the Gospel Witness is occupied with the question, “What is the gospel?” Its answer: “The gospel is good news from heaven in your own day.” It declares that the gospel necessarily involves supernatural power and contrasts what it describes as the true gospel with what it characterizes as modern Christendom. It asserts that Joseph Smith’s gospel is the same as Paul’s and concludes by urging “self-called ministers . . . [to] cease to preach for hire and divine for money.” This assault did not go unchallenged: soon after the Gospel Witness appeared, it drew a response from an anonymous Church of England cleric, A Word for the True Gospel; a Tract for the Latter Days (London: Wertheim and Macintosh, 1848).

Spencer initially published Character!! in the Star of July 1. The first pamphlet edition (item 359) was struck off from this setting—with the addition of the sentence The footsteps of our history, from Missouri to Illinois, and from Illinois to the Great Salt Lake, are marked with the blood of our martyred sons and daughters! in the second paragraph of the pamphlet; the italicizing of medical in the third line from the bottom of p. 2; and the addition of quotation marks in the twelfth line from the bottom of p. 3. The second edition (item 360), also distinguished from the first by the absence of Liverpool in the colophon, appears to have been reprinted from the Star for it does not have these additions. The second edition further differs from the first in the transposition of two words in the second paragraph of p. 3, the introduction of two misprints, sexal and balls, in the second paragraph of p. 4, two spelling corrections in the final paragraph, and a number of changes in punctuation and capitalization.

Character!! begins with a stern defense of the character of the Latter-day Saints and then moves to an attack on the “christian churches,” which it claims have “so mutilated and garbled the ancient gospel, for more than seventeen hundred years, and darkened the pathway to heaven, by commentaries and the precepts of men, that many generations have lived and perished under thy deceivings without God in the world.” To underscore what it views as the failure of these churches, it describes the wretched condition of the poor in some of the largest European cities.

When the second editions were printed is not known, but one might guess it was soon after the first editions since Orson Pratt arrived in Liverpool on July 26 and immediately began publishing his own works.¹ The European Mission financial records bear this out. They show that the Millennial Star office began distributing copies of the Gospel Witness on June 27 and Character!! on June 30, and over the next three months issued about 6,500 and 5,400 copies, respectively. These numbers are undoubtedly close to the totals of the two editions of each tract, for the financial records indicate only two further sales during the period September 30, 1848 to May 1, 1852—“100 of Spencers Tracts” on October 31 and 25 of the Gospel Witness on November 14, 1848—and the inventory of May 1, 1852, lists no copies of either tract in the Millennial Star office.²

Item 357: Flake-Draper 8324. CtY, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC. Item 358: Flake-Draper 8323. CSmH, NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 359: Flake-Draper 8321. CSmH, CtY, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC. Item 360: Flake-Draper 8321a. UPB, USlC, UU.

361 ROBERTS, Sidney. Man is a self-existing being spiritually. An oration written by Sidney Roberts, on the 4th of July, 1848, on the materiality of the soul, and the self-existency of man, who is co-eternal with God. [Signed at end:] Sidney Roberts, A Free Thinker. [Iowa City? 1848?]

Broadside 57.5 x 39.5 cm. Text in four columns.

Born in Fairfield County, Connecticut, August 28, 1809, Sidney Roberts joined the Church before the close of 1840, moved to Nauvoo soon after, and located in Iowa City following the Mormon exodus from Illinois. By 1850 he had come to Pottawattamie County, and that year he made the trek to Utah. Settling first in Salt Lake City—where he was involved with Thomas Howard in making paper—he moved to Springville a few years later and was living near Kanosh, Millard County, at the time of the 1870 census. He died at Kanosh, April 30, 1874.¹

In February 1848 Roberts wrote to the Whig Central Committee of Iowa and volunteered, for a fee, to go as their official delegate to the Mormons at Council Bluffs. At this point Whigs and Democrats divided almost equally in Iowa, and each was anxious for the Mormon vote, so on March 1 the Central Committee appointed him as one of two delegates to the Latter-day Saints. Roberts reached Council Bluffs on March 24, with letters and documents from the committee, and met with Brigham Young and the Church leaders during the next three days, urging them to vote with the Whigs who, he promised, would support Mormon interests. On the 27th they agreed to give the Whigs their vote.²

Roberts seems to have composed Man Is a Self-Existing Being Spiritually about three months after he returned from his visit with the Church authorities.³ A dense, rambling piece based on Joseph Smith’s King Follett discourse (see item 271), its main points are that God “is a self existing Being” whose God-like nature depends on his ability to reveal his will to mankind; that the “spirit of man is coequal with [God] . . . and cannot be annihilated”; that a defining characteristic of a man is his “power of choice”; that “the personage of man was made after the form and image of God”; and that “the object for which he was formed was . . . that [he] might have a desire to be glorified and become like unto [God].”

Flake-Draper 7383a. USlC.

362 HYDE, Orson. To the Saints scattered abroad—greeting: [Signed at end:] Orson Hyde. [St. Louis? 1848]

Broadside 25 x 20 cm.

To the Saints marks another of Orson Hyde’s confrontations with those who challenged the leadership of Brigham Young (see items 263–64, 303). Written in response to Lyman Wight’s An Address by Way of an Abridged Account and Journal of My Life from February 1844 up to April 1848, with an Appeal to the Latter Day Saints, issued in the spring of 1848 (see item 345), it accuses Wight of being too much influenced by George Miller, criticizes him for not bowing to the authority of the Twelve, and condemns the communitarian practices of his Texas colony. It exhorts the branches of the Church to ignore Wight’s call, continue immigrating to the Salt Lake Valley, and follow the instructions in the General Epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles (item 346). At the end Hyde remarks, “The next circular that I issue, I hope may come from our own press at Council Bluffs, under the head of the ‘Frontier Guardian’” (see items 371, 402).

Both of the copies at the LDS Church are on a sheet approximately 25 x 40 cm., folded to make two leaves, with text only on the recto of the first leaf. One of these, addressed to “Pres B Young Salt Lake City,” is dated in Thomas Bullock’s hand on the back, “Oct 1848,” which is scratched out with “As early as August 1848” in pencil by Andrew Jenson; this copy also has “Aug 1848” in pencil in Jenson’s hand on the front. It would seem, however, that To the Saints was printed earlier than these inscriptions indicate.

Wilford Woodruff left Council Bluffs on June 21, 1848, en route to his mission to the East Coast. Orson Hyde left the Bluffs three days later on his way east to raise money for a printing press. On June 26 he overtook Woodruff about twenty miles west of Mount Pisgah and left him at Pisgah on the 28th. Woodruff reached St. Louis the night of July 12, and on Sunday the 16th he and Hyde preached to the St. Louis Saints. The next day they again parted company, Woodruff leaving for Chicago, Hyde for Washington, D.C. Between July 17 and August 22 Woodruff received no word from Hyde. On September 1, from Boston, he wrote to Orson Pratt in Liverpool and sent him a copy of Lyman Wight’s pamphlet and a copy of Hyde’s To the Saints—which Pratt reprinted in the Millennial Star of October 15, 1848.¹

It is conceivable that Woodruff received a copy of To the Saints between August 22 and September 1 and neglected to mention it in his journal. More likely, however, he obtained copies of the circular from Hyde when they were together in St. Louis and brought them with him to Boston—in which case Hyde had To the Saints printed on or before July 17, undoubtedly in St. Louis.²

George A. Smith, Ezra T. Benson, and Joseph Young sent a copy of Wight’s pamphlet and Hyde’s “very short and charitable reply” to Brigham Young with a letter dated October 2, 1848. Two months later, on Sunday, December 3, Thomas Bullock read the Wight tract and To the Saints to a conference in the Salt Lake Valley, and at the end of a three-hour meeting the Church authorities excommunicated Lyman Wight and George Miller.³ The copy of To the Saints with the date “Oct 1848” in Bullock’s hand is probably the one sent by Smith, Benson, and Young—the date coming from their letter.

Flake-Draper 4174a. USlC.

363 Songs from the mountains, with a sketch of the Great Salt Lake Valley and city. [At foot below border:] H. M. Clayton, Printer, 76 South Third Street, Philadelphia. [1848]

Broadside 46.5 x 20 cm. Seventeen lines of text after the title, followed by four poems in two columns; ornamental border.

The seventeen lines of text after the title describe the physical features of the Great Salt Lake Valley, including the distance from Council Bluffs to Salt Lake City, 1,010 miles, its altitude above sea level, 4,300 feet, and the latitude and longitude of the northern boundary of the temple block. About half of this text, rearranged, coincides word-for-word with the description of the Valley at the end of William Clayton’s Emigrants’ Guide. Some details—the reference to Utah Lake, the ratio of salt to water in the Great Salt Lake, and the division of the city into blocks—are not in Clayton’s Guide. Curiously this text gives the distance from Great Salt Lake City to Council Bluffs as 1,010 miles, while Clayton’s Guide gives the distance from the city to Winter Quarters as 1,031 miles.

Filling the left column is a poem in eleven 8-line verses, entitled “Clayton’s Pioneer,” which tells of the return of the pioneers to Winter Quarters in October 1847 and describes the Salt Lake Valley. Its first verse: “The pioneers at length are come / To greet their friends in peace at home; / To spend the winter and prepare / Again the pilgrim’s fate to share. / Their sunburnt faces tell of toils, / Aside from Gentile Mobber’s broils, / Where they have pass’d through many a scene / Of pleasures and of hardships keen.” This seems to have been written just after the pioneers’ return—presumably by William Clayton—and is not known in any other source.

The first song in the right column is Eliza R. Snow’s “Hail to the ‘Twelve,’ and Pioneers,” in five 4-line verses with a 4-line chorus—to be sung, according to the Millennial Star, to the tune of “Yes, My Native Land I Love Thee.” It salutes the Twelve on their return to Winter Quarters, congratulates them for finding “the house of Israel’s rest,” and bids them a safe eastward journey. The first verse: “Hail, ye chosen men of Israel, / Who the hiding place have found; / The Eternal God has blessed you, / You have stood on holy ground.”

On Wednesday, September 8, 1847, the westbound Jedediah M. Grant company, with which Eliza R. Snow was traveling, met Brigham Young and some of the Twelve as they were returning to Winter Quarters, and on the 8th and 9th they camped together at the Sweetwater River about twenty-five miles east of South Pass. In the evening of September 9 the camps assembled to hear Orson Pratt, Heber C. Kimball, and Brigham Young speak; here they sang Eliza’s “Hail to the ‘Twelve,’ and Pioneers,” composed for the occasion.¹ The song was printed in the Millennial Star of January 15, 1848, the Frontier Guardian of July 11, 1849, and in Eliza’s Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political (Liverpool, 1856), pp. 183–84. The versions in the broadside and Frontier Guardian are identical but differ at a half dozen points from those in the Star and in Poems.

William Clayton’s “Come, Come, Ye Saints” is the second song in the right column—the first appearance in print, as far as it is known, of Mormonism’s most famous hymn, composed by Clayton in the Iowa camps, April 15, 1846, upon learning that his wife Diantha had just born him a son.² The song was added to the LDS hymnal in 1851, where it has remained. Apart from a few changes in punctuation, the text in the broadside is the same as that in the 1851 hymnal, except for We will in the third verse which is changed to We’ll in the hymnbook.

The last poem in the right column is entitled “Safety in Zion. By J. H. Flanigan, On the Ohio River, June 10th, 1848, when starting on a Mission to the British Islands.” In six 4-line verses, it speaks of the chaos filling the earth, the sanctuary for the Saints in “the Mountains of Israel, far in the West,” and the call of the elders to cross the sea to hasten the gathering to Zion. Its first verse: “At a time when the nations seem’d stricken with rage, / And commotions were rife upon history’s page; / When the people seem’d vex’d and fired with wrath, / To o’erturn the dynasties of the whole earth.”

Flanigan returned to Winter Quarters on May 9, 1848, after traveling for three months with Amasa Lyman—from whom he undoubtedly learned the details of the Salt Lake Valley. Eighteen days later he crossed the Missouri River, en route to a mission in England. At St. Louis, on June 8, he took passage on the steamer Oriental, and on the 10th he reached Shawneetown, Illinois, when he apparently composed his poem. On July 17 he arrived in Philadelphia and the next day published Songs from the Mountains: “I got some verses Printed at Claytons Office on the Corner of Dock & 3d. 300 Coppies caust $3.25.”³ What prompted him to publish this piece is not clear; perhaps he hoped to use it to raise funds for his mission.

Born in Down County, Ireland, in September 1822, James Henry Flanigan converted to Mormonism and immigrated to Nauvoo in the early 1840s, and then spent his time traveling as a missionary throughout Tennessee, Kentucky, and the northeastern states. On October 5, 1848, he arrived at Liverpool to begin his English mission. His first field of labor was in the Bedfordshire Conference, and in January 1849 he was appointed conference president, serving until he assumed the presidency of the Birmingham Conference a year later (see items 390, 405, 431, 447, 463, 465, 469–70, 526). For the next thirteen months he labored in Birmingham, until his death from smallpox on January 29, 1851. He “was a promising young man,” Andrew Jenson wrote, who “possessed wisdom far beyond his years.”⁴

Flake-Draper 8278. MH.

364 A collection of sacred hymns, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Europe. Selected by Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt, and John Taylor. Sixth edition. Liverpool: Published and sold by Orson Spencer, A.B., 39, Torbock Street, Soho Street, and sold by the agents throughout England. 1848.

352 pp. 10.5 cm.

Orson Spencer noted in the Millennial Star of March 15, 1848, that the fifth edition of the hymnbook was out of print and would “probably be reprinted before many months,” and one month later he reported: “We are receiving many urgent orders for Hymn Books, but shall not venture upon a republication of hymns till a greater portion of the accounts due the office are collected in.” Finally, in the Star of July 15 he announced that the new hymnal was in press and would be ready in two or three weeks. Copies in sheep were priced at 1s. 6d., the same as the 1847 and 1849 editions (see items 252, 340).¹

Franklin D. Richards later reported that the sixth edition was printed in 2,000 copies. The European Mission financial records indicate that the mission office began distributing it on July 31 and had sent out about 1,825 books by October 2. During the next seven weeks it filled orders for five “best bound” copies and then on November 25 began issuing the seventh edition, selling 579 copies on the 29th (see item 392).²

A line-for-line reprint of the fifth edition, the sixth edition collates: title page (p. [1]), with Liverpool: Printed by Richard James, 39 B, South Castle Street on the verso; preface to first edition (p. [3]); preface to sixth edition, signed by Orson Spencer and dated at Liverpool, July 4, 1848 (p. [4]); texts of 283 numbered hymns (pp. [5]–342); index of first lines (pp. [343]–352), with R. James, Printer, Liverpool. at the foot of p. 352. The copy at Community of Christ is bound in black blind-stamped sheep with a circular pattern inside an ornamental border on the covers, the backstrip plain except for the title in gilt. The LDS Church’s is in black pebbled sheep with a wide gilt ornamental border on the covers, four panels between raised bands on the backstrip with gilt decorations and the title in gilt, and gilt edges. A third copy is in private hands.

Flake-Draper 1765. MoInRC, USlC.

365 JONES, Dan. Yr eurgrawn ysgrythyrol, yn yr hwn y cynnwysir crynodeb o adnodau a nodiadau, i brofi prif bynciau Saint y Dyddiau Diweddaf. [7 lines] Merthyr-Tydvil: Cyhoeddwyd, ac ar werth, gan Capt. Jones, ac ar werth hefyd gan lyfrwerthwyr ereill. Argraffwyd gan John Jones, Rhydybont. MDCCCXLVIII. [The scriptural treasury, in which is contained a compendium of verses and notes, to prove the main subjects of the Latter-day Saints. Merthyr Tydfil: Published and for sale by Capt. Jones, and for sale also by other booksellers. Printed by John Jones, Rhydybont. MDCCCXLVIII.]

iv[5]–288 pp. 16.5 cm.

Flake-Draper 4468. Dennis 20. CtY, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN, WsSW.

366 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Pregeth gwrth-Formonaidd. At y Parch. T. Williams, Ebenezer, ger Caerfyrddin. [Caption title] [An anti-Mormon sermon. To the Rev. T. Williams, Ebenezer, near Carmarthen.] [At foot of p. 4:] Argraffwyd gan John Jones, Rhydybont. [Printed by John Jones, Rhydybont.] [1848]

4 pp. 17.5 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722q. Dennis 21. NjP.

367 PRATT, Orson. Divine authority; or the question, was Joseph Smith sent of God? By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 1. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, September 30th, 1848. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1848] [Last word, line 10 of text, p. 1:] vir-.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

368 PRATT, Orson. Divine authority, or the question, was Joseph Smith sent of God? By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] No. 1. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, September 30th, 1848. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1850?] [Last word, line 10 of text, p. 1:] virtu-.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

369 PRATT, Orson. Divine authority, or the question, was Joseph Smith sent of God? By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] No. 1. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, September 30th, 1848. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1850?] [Last word, line 10 of text, p. 1:] among.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

370 PRATT, Orson. Divine authority, or the question, was Joseph Smith sent of God? By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] No. 1. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, September 30th, 1848. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1856?] [Last word, line 10 of text, p. 1:] virtuous.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

Divine Authority is the first of a series of sixteen tracts Orson Pratt published during his first term as president of the British Mission, July 1848 to January 1851—an undertaking that transformed the Mormons’ approach to proselytizing. Up to this point, Mormon pamphleteers had published their works in editions of three, in a few instances five, thousand—with two exceptions, the Liverpool Proclamation of the Twelve Apostles (item 285), issued in twenty thousand copies, and Orson Spencer’s broadside Invitation (item 339), eventually distributed in over two hundred thousand copies. Now, in the summer of 1848, delegated to “preach the gospel, print, [and] publish,” Orson Pratt came to England with a new idea: he would apply Spencer’s notion of a broadly circulated advertising piece to tract distribution.¹ During the next thirty months he published his sixteen pamphlets, not in editions of a few thousand, but in multiple editions of tens of thousands. The mission office sold these tracts to the various conferences to be loaned or handed out free of charge, and the conferences organized “tract societies” among their members with the mandate to circulate the pamphlets in their local areas. Some of the conferences formalized this undertaking even further by printing their own covers for the tracts they distributed.² In effect, Orson’s pamphlets formed the basis of a “media blitz,” and by the time he sailed for America on February 2, 1851, he had printed more than four hundred thousand copies. As a result of this effort, about twenty thousand were baptized into the Church during the thirty months of his presidency—twice the average over the two decades 1840–59. At the same time, the book debt owed the mission by the local conferences grew to £1,300 by the time he left and tripled during the next two years.³

It seems apparent that Orson Pratt envisioned Divine Authority as the opening piece in a series of pamphlets inasmuch as it bears the number 1 at the head of the caption title and his Kingdom of God in four parts, Remarkable Visions, and New Jerusalem continue this numbering (see items 373–86, 393–94, 436–38). Indeed, just prior to his departure from England, he bound these tracts, in this order, together with his nine other pamphlets in a volume with the binder’s title O. Pratt’s Works, &c., and it is in this form that the tracts are usually found today (see items 551–53).

Divine Authority was begun as a serial article in four installments in the Millennial Star of August 15, 1848, and two weeks later the Star announced that it would “be enlarged to sixteen solid pages of the same size as the Millennial Star” and would be for sale “in a few days,” at 10s. per hundred, or £4 10s. per thousand. This ad further urged the book agents to send in their orders immediately, so Orson Pratt could “form a rough estimate how many thousand to print before the type [was] taken down.”⁴ Item 367 is this first edition since its typesetting is that of the Star.

Item 369 occurs in the first O. Pratt’s Works (item 551) and consequently was printed no later than January 1851. A copy of item 368 is included in a pamphlet volume originally owned by George Peden Waugh and hence was printed before February 1853, when he sailed to America.⁵ Moreover, item 368 does not have F. D. Richards’s or S. W. Richards’s name in the colophon, which was the case with the other editions of Orson’s pamphlets reprinted by the Richards brothers (items 376, 379, 380, 383, 522), so it was likely printed before Pratt left England in February 1851. And since it does not occur in O. Pratt’s Works, it was probably issued before item 369.

Between September 23, 1848 and September 1, 1849, the mission office sent out almost 18,000 copies of Divine Authority, and between September 2, 1849, and December 21, 1850, it distributed about 5,700 more. An inventory dated December 21, 1850, lists 19,671 copies remaining in the office.⁶ Since it is clear that the numbers recorded in the European Mission financial records for Orson Pratt’s Great First Cause do not include those copies bound in O. Pratt’s Works that he took to America (see item 543), it is likely that the numbers above also do not include those copies of Divine Authority that he bound in O. Pratt’s Works. One might guess, therefore, that during the period September 1848–December 1850, between 45,000 and 50,000 copies of the tract were struck off.

The typography of the caption title of item 370 resembles that of the 1856 printing of the Kingdom of God, Part III, so item 370 is undoubtedly the edition advertised as having “just been issued” in the Star of August 23, 1856—about three weeks after Orson Pratt began his second term as British Mission president. Richard James printed this edition in 10,000 copies. Wilford Woodruff published an American edition in 1849 (item 413), the text of the tract was reprinted in two installments in the Frontier Guardian of February 7 and 21, 1849, a French translation was published in seven installments in the Étoile du Déséret and in a separate pamphlet (items 576, 747), and Erastus Snow published a Danish edition in 1852 (items 662, 767). George Q. Cannon sent 6,000 copies of Divine Authority to Salt Lake City in 1862, when he shipped most of the British Mission’s inventory of books to the Valley.⁷

Divine Authority takes its theme from an anonymous letter, quoted at the beginning, which declares that whether Joseph Smith was the one raised up by God “invested with authority” is “the all important question.” That he was is argued in eleven parts, the first four contending that “strong presumptive evidence” is provided by his teachings which are the same as those of the primitive Church; his testimony that a new gospel dispensation was restored by an angel; his claim that the apostolic authority was restored to him by Peter, James, and John; and his teaching of the gathering of Israel. The next three parts use Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 29, and Genesis 49 to show that the advent of the Book of Mormon was predicted and described in the Bible—following, for example, the Voice of Warning, the Gospel Reflector, Julian Moses’s A Few Remarks in Reply, and Charles B. Thompson’s Evidences in Proof of the Book of Mormons (see items 38, 95, 133, 134, 195). Part eight mentions the work of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood as evidence for the validity of the Book of Mormon, following Thompson’s Evidences and William I. Appleby’s Mormonism Consistent! (items 134, 189), and the ninth lists several prophecies by Joseph Smith with an account of their fulfillment. The last two parts speak of the “many thousands of living witnesses who testify that God has revealed unto them the truth of the Book of Mormon” and of miracles “wrought by Joseph Smith” as evidence of his divine authority. Such a widely distributed tract was destined to draw responses, and one of these, the anonymous Remarks on Mormonism, Occasioned by the Question of Orson Pratt, a Mormon Apostle, “Was Joseph Smith Sent of God?” (Glasgow, 1848), brought a reply from Orson Pratt the following year (items 406–8).

With Divine Authority and the fifteen other tracts he produced during his 1848–51 mission, Orson Pratt stepped out of his brother’s shadow and took his place as the Church’s leading theological spokesman. Where his brother was a polemicist, he was an apologist, methodically and exhaustively defending Mormonism’s basic concepts, and with these tracts he raised the discussion of Mormon theology to a new intellectual level. Three generations of Latter-day Saints would study these works, and later Mormon writers would continue to use them as their points of departure.

Item 367: Flake-Draper 6457. NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 368: Flake-Draper 6457a. NN, UPB, USlC. Item 369: Flake-Draper 6457b. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 370: Flake-Draper 6457c. UPB.

371 HYDE, Orson. [Prospectus for the Frontier Guardian. St. Louis? 1848?]

Orson Hyde left Council Bluffs on June 24, 1848, en route to the East Coast to raise money for a printing press. At Burlington, Iowa, he obtained letters of introduction to some of the Whig leaders in Washington, and Almon W. Babbitt, who would persist as Hyde’s political adversary, urged him to throw his support to Lewis Cass, the Democratic presidential candidate, and promised to obtain a press for him if he would promote Cass. Hyde’s response was consistent with the Mormons’ agreement with the Iowa Whigs a month earlier: he would go with Zachary Taylor, “press or no press” (see item 361). In mid-July he paused in St. Louis and then headed for Washington, D.C., where he would borrow the necessary funds. On his return, he purchased a press in Cincinnati from the Cincinnati Type Foundry and by September 17 had reached St. Louis. Three days later he issued the prospectus for his new paper, the Frontier Guardian. He arrived back at Council Bluffs on October 15 and the following month began setting up his press (see item 402).¹

No copy of the prospectus is located, but it seems clear that Hyde did indeed publish it as a separate. Wilford Woodruff, in Newark, New Jersey, “recieved A Prospectus for subscribers from Br Hyde & a line from him” on October 11, 1848. The Gospel Herald of December 21, 1848, reported that “Orson Hyde has issued a prospectus for a new paper, to be called the ‘Frontier Guardian,’” and the Herald of March 22, 1849, remarked, “Orson Hyde last fall published a prospectus and canvassed the United States for subscribers and we presume got a few, but we cannot learn that he has issued a paper, and presume he never will.”² Two letters from Hyde appear in the St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican of September 19 and September 22, 1848, so one might guess that he had the prospectus struck off at the shop of the Republican—which earlier in the year had printed the General Epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles and William Clayton’s Emigrants’ Guide (items 346, 354).

The prospectus is reprinted in the first seven numbers of the Frontier Guardian and in the Millennial Star of May 1, 1849. Dated at St. Louis, September 20, 1848, it announces Hyde’s intention to publish a semimonthly paper at Council Bluffs called the Frontier Guardian—to be issued weekly “so soon as the requisite preparations can be made.” The paper, it continues, will endorse men for public office and discuss the “signs of the times,” religion and prophecy, literature and poetry, and the arts and sciences; it will “strongly advocate the establishing of Common Schools along the frontier.” Subscriptions are $2 per year, “payable invariably in advance.”

372 GIBSON, William. [Handbill proposing a series of lectures in various clergymen’s chapels. Edinburgh? 1848]

William Gibson was born in Paisley, Scotland, November 4, 1809, joined the Church in 1840, and labored in the British Mission from that point on until he sailed for America with a company of Mormon emigrants in 1851. He presided over the Edinburgh Conference for four years, 1846–49, the Manchester Conference during 1850, and the Church in St. Louis before making the overland crossing to Utah in 1853 (see items 441, 525, 536). Settling in Ogden, he returned to England as a missionary, 1859–62, returned again three years later, 1865–67, and served in Pennsylvania, 1869–70. He died in Salt Lake City, June 5, 1875.¹

In September 1848 Gibson was involved in a debate with a Baptist minister, the Rev. A. Scott. Soon after, large handbills were put up which advertised a “grand Tea Party in honour of Mr. Scott” and listed “quite a number of Rev. Gentlemen who were to be there,” each to speak against Mormonism. Gibson responded by getting “several hundred Bills printed” in which he stated that he was prepared to go to each of the Rev. Gentlemen’s chapels and deliver a lecture on the subject the cleric was to address at the Tea Party, allowing him half the time to refute anything Gibson might say. If the clergymen did not accept this offer but still spoke against the Church, the handbill concluded, “the Public would know how much credit to give them for Moral Courage & how much weight to give to their testimony on [the] Subjects.” “In consequence of these Bills,” Gibson asserts in his journal, “the Tea Party was a great failure As few of the Parsons went to it & those who went did not speak on the Subject of Mormonism with the exception of Mr. Scott & Dunconson.” ²

Item 372 is the first of five handbills Gibson mentions in his journal (items 388, 391, 523–24), none of which are located.

The Kingdom of God, in four parts, is the second work issued by Orson Pratt during his 1848–51 mission to England. Each of the first three parts is known in four editions, the fourth part in two, and each part presents its own bibliographic problems. Since it is more illuminating to treat all of the editions together, the various printings of each of the parts are listed and discussed here—with a summary of the four-part text at the end.

373 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part I. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 2. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, October 31, 1848. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39 B, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1848] [First word, last line, p. 1:] fully.

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

374 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part I. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 2. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, October 31, 1848. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1850?] [First word, last line, p. 1:] more.

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

375 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part I. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 2. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, October 31st, 1848. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1850?] [First word, last line, p. 1:] understood.

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

376 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part I. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 2. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, October 31st, 1848. [At foot of p. 8:] Liverpool. Published by S. W. Richards, 15, Wilton Street. London: For sale at the L. D. Saints’ Book and Millennial Star Depôt, 35, Jewin Street, City, and by agents and all booksellers throughout Great Britain and Ireland. Printed for the publisher, by R. James, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1853?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

The Kingdom of God, Part I was first printed in the Millennial Star of October 15 and November 1, 1848. Item 373 was printed from the Star setting and is hence the first edition. A copy at the Brigham Young University Lee Library has inscribed at the top: “Thos. Ord’s Book. Octb. 17th 1848.” The tract was advertised in the Star of November 1: “Just published, twenty thousand of the tract entitled ‘The Kingdom of God,’ half the size of the Millennial Star. Price 5s. per hundred; £2 5s. per thousand; £10 per five thousand. This is Part First of a series of tracts on the same subject. . . . Part Second of the ‘Kingdom of God’ will soon be issued from the press.”¹

When item 374 was published is not known. Since it does not have the name of F. D. Richards or S. W. Richards in the colophon—which was the case with the other editions of Orson’s pamphlets reprinted by the Richards brothers (items 376, 379, 380, 383, 522)—it was likely printed before Pratt left England in February 1851. And inasmuch as it does not occur in the first O. Pratt’s Works (item 551), it was probably issued before item 375, which does occur in O. Pratt’s Works and was therefore printed no later than January 1851. Indeed, item 375 was undoubtedly printed before December 21, 1850, since on that date the office had 13,111 copies of the Kingdom of God, Part I in its inventory.

The European Mission financial records show that between October 22, 1848, and December 21, 1850, the Millennial Star sent out about 26,500 copies of the tract and on the latter date, as mentioned above, had 13,111 remaining in its inventory.² Since it is clear that the numbers recorded in the European Mission financial records for Orson Pratt’s Great First Cause do not include those copies bound in O. Pratt’s Works that he took to America (see item 543), it is likely that the numbers above also do not include those copies of the Kingdom of God, Part I that he had bound in O. Pratt’s Works. So it would appear that between October 1848 and December 1850, approximately 45,000 of the Kingdom of God, Part I were printed.

Since S. W. Richards was president of the British Mission from May 1852 to June 1854, item 376 is undoubtedly the edition referred to in the Millennial Star of October 29, 1853: “The Kingdom of God, Parts 1 and 2, are reprinted, and can now be obtained.” The mission financial records indicate that at that time 5,000 copies of each of these two parts were reprinted by Richard James at a cost of £10.³

Flake-Draper 6508–9. Item 373: NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 374: UPB, USlC. Item 375: CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 376: UPB.

377 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part II. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 3. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool—November 30, 1848. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [1848?] [Last word, p. [1]:] of

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

378 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part II. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 3. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, November 30, 1848. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [1850?] [Last word, p. [1]:] un-.

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

379 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part II. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 3. [Not dated at end.] [At foot of p. 8:] Liverpool: Published by F. D. Richards, 15, Wilton Street. For sale at the L. D. Saints’ Book and Millennial Star Depôt, 35, Jewin Street, City, London, and by agents and all booksellers throughout Great Britain and Ireland. R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [1851?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

380 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part II. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 3. [At end:] 15 Wilton Street, Liverpool, November 30, 1848. [At foot of p. 8:] Liverpool: Published by S. W. Richards, 15, Wilton Street. London: for sale at the L. D. Saints’ Book and Millennial Star Depôt, 35, Jewin Street, City, and by agents and all booksellers throughout Great Britain and Ireland. Printed for the publisher by R. James, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1853?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

Part II of the Kingdom of God was not printed in the Star but first issued in pamphlet form. The Star noted that it would soon be out in its issues of November 1 and November 15, 1848, and advertised it for sale on December 1 at the same prices as part I. Twenty-one months later, the Star of September 1, 1850, reported that part II had been reprinted.¹ Since the form of the date at the end of item 377 is the same as that at the end of the first edition of Remarkable Visions (item 393), and the copies of the Kingdom of God, Part II that were bound in the first O. Pratt’s Works are item 378, one might guess that item 377 is the first edition, published in November 1848, and item 378 is the second, published in August 1850.

The European Mission Financial Records show that about 21,000 copies were distributed between November 28, 1848, and December 21, 1850, when 15,911 remained in the office.² As in the case of part I, these numbers probably do not include the copies bound in O. Pratt’s Works that Orson took with him to America.

Since F. D. Richards was mission president from January 1851 to May 1852, item 379 is undoubtedly the edition mentioned in the Star of November 15, 1851, which noted that part II had been reprinted.³ S. W. Richards succeeded his brother and served as president until June 1854, so item 380 is certainly the edition referred to in the Millennial Star of October 29, 1853. At that time part II was reprinted in 5,000 copies at a cost of £5.⁴

Flake-Draper 6508–9. Item 377: NN, USlC, UU. Item 378: CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 379: UPB, UU. Item 380: UPB.

381 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part III. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 4. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, Jan, 14th 1849. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [1849?] [Last word on p. 1:] Jerico.

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

382 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part III. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 4. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, Jan. 14th, 1849. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [1850?] [Last word on p. l:] Israel.

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

383 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part III. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 4. [Not dated at end.] [At foot of p. 8:] Liverpool: Published by F. D. Richards, 15, Wilton Street. For sale at the L. D. Saints’ Book and Millennial Star Depôt, 35, Jewin Street, City, London, and by agents and all booksellers throughout Great Britain and Ireland. R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [1851?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

384 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part III. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 4. [Not dated at end.] [At foot of p. 8:] Liverpool: Published by Orson Pratt, 42, Islington. For sale at the L. D. Saints' Book and Millennial Star Depôt, 35, Jewin Street, City, London, and by agents and all booksellers throughout Great Britain and Ireland. J. Sadler, Printer, 1, Moorfields, Liverpool. [1856?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

Part III of the Kingdom of God also was not printed in the Millennial Star. The Star noted in its issues of December 15, 1848, and January 1, 1849, that it was in press and reported on January 15 that it was ready—price, the same as the preceding two parts. On September 1, 1850, the Star announced that part III had been reprinted.¹ These two editions are undoubtedly items 381 and 382, and since item 382 is the edition that occurs in the first O. Pratt’s Works, it is most likely the second, printed in August 1850.

About 18,700 copies of part III were distributed by the mission office between January 13, 1849, and December 21, 1850, when 17,771 remained in the office.² As in the case of the preceding two parts, these numbers likely do not include the copies in O. Pratt’s Works that were shipped to America.

Item 383 is without doubt the edition mentioned as just reprinted in the Star of November 15, 1851, inasmuch as F. D. Richards was the mission president at that time.³ Since the address of the British Mission headquarters was 42, Islington subsequent to March 1856, and Orson Pratt was president of the mission from August 1856 to October 1857, item 384 was likely published during that period.

Flake-Draper 6508–9. Item 381: NN, UPB, UU. Item 382: CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 383: UPB, USlC, UU. Item 384: UPB.

385 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part IV. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 5. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, July 14th, 1849. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1849?] [Last word, line 2 of text, p. 1:] order.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

386 PRATT, Orson. The kingdom of God. Part IV. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] No. 5. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, July 14th, 1849. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1850?] [Last word, line 2 of text, p. 1:] of.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

The Millennial Star of July 1, 1849, noted that part IV—which had not previously been printed in the Star—was in press, and two weeks later it announced that it was “just published,” its price the same as Divine Authority.¹ Since item 386 occurs in the first O. Pratt’s Works, one might infer that item 385 is the first edition, issued in July 1849, and item 386 is the second, printed no later than January 1851. Indeed, since the mission financial records indicate that 27,231 of part IV remained in the mission office on December 21, 1850, item 386 was undoubtedly printed before then. The office distributed about 14,100 copies of part IV between July 6, 1849, and December 21, 1850. And as these figures probably do not include those in O. Pratt’s Works that were shipped to America, one might guess that items 385 and 386 comprised about 45,000 copies.²

Flake-Draper 6508–9. Item 385: NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 386: CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU.

Orson Pratt clearly intended the Kingdom of God to be part of a series following his Divine Authority—hence the numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively, at the heads of the titles of the four parts (see items 367–70). Its prototype was the third chapter of Parley Pratt’s Voice of Warning—although Orson’s metaphysical speculations, particularly in the first part, go far beyond the scope of his brother’s article. Part I opens with the assertion that the “kingdom of God is an order of government established by divine authority” and “is the only legal government that can exist in any part of the universe,” all other governments being “illegal and unauthorized.” It then moves to the first of seven topics, “the nature and character of King.” “God is the King,” it declares, and “in him exists all legal authority.” He “occasionally visited his subjects in ancient times” but has “kept silence” for seventeen hundred years because “he has no subjects to converse with.” Those who have claimed to be his subjects have substituted a false God, a “God without BODY, PARTS or PASSIONS,” which Orson brands as a form of idolatry, even atheism—echoing his brother’s essay “The True God and His Worship Contrasted with Idolatry” in the Millennial Star of April 1842. “The true God,” part I continues, “exists in both time and in space” and “has a body, parts, and passions.” “Man resembles him in the features and form of his body, and he does not differ materially in size,” and like man, “he had a Father; and he was the ‘express image of the person of the Father.’” “The Godhead consists of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” all three of whom are material beings as “immateriality is only another name for nothing”—a theme Orson would develop more fully in his Absurdities of Immaterialism (items 428–29).

At this point in part I, Orson attempts to reconcile his literal reading of the Bible with his Mormon materialism, employing certain ideas he had introduced in his essays in the New-York Messenger and would expand upon in his Absurdities of Immaterialism, Great First Cause, and his 1856 tract the Holy Spirit (see items 428–29, 543).³ He explains the omnipresence of God by postulating that the Holy Spirit “exists in vast immeasurable quantities in connection with all material worlds,” “extends through all space, intermingling with all other matter,” and exists “in inexhaustible quantities.” All natural phenomena “are produced in their origin by the actual presence of this intelligent, all-wise, and all-powerful material substance.” “Each atom of the Holy Spirit is intelligent,” his explanation continues, “and like all other matter has solidity, form, and size, and occupies space.” As a finite number of atoms can not be omnipresent, “an infinite number of atoms is requisite to be everywhere in infinite space,” and when two people receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, they “do not each receive at the same time the same identical particles, though they each receive a substance exactly similar in kind.”

Orson Pratt’s ideas here, as Sterling McMurrin has pointed out, are “reminiscent of the monadology of the seventeenth-century German mathematician and philosopher [Gottfried Wilhelm] Leibniz, who held that all reality consists of mind atoms that are living centers of force.” These ideas have never been generally accepted by the LDS Church, which continues to view the Holy Ghost as “an unembodied personage,” as Orson Spencer wrote in his fifth letter to William Crowell (see items 334–35, 347, 736).⁴

Part I next takes up the second topic, “the character and requisite qualifications of the subordinate officers in the kingdom of God.” The various officers, as identified in the New Testament, it claims, are “apostles, prophets, bishops, evangelists, elders, pastors, teachers, and deacons,” and these are to be called of God “by new revelation.” The traditional Christian churches, the tract asserts, with very few exceptions, declare that there is no later revelation than the New Testament, and consequently all of their baptisms and sacraments “are an abomination in the sight of God.” And it warns the reader to withdraw from those societies that are “unauthorized” in their ministrations and “seek after the apostles and prophets in the kingdom of God, and receive their ministrations, and you shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, and obtain eternal life.” This tract was certainly objectionable to the traditional Christian clergy, and responses were inevitable. One such response, T. W. P. Taylder’s The Materialism of the Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, Examined and Exposed (Woolwich, 1849), would draw a reply from Orson Pratt, his Absurdities of Immateialism.

Part II of the Kingdom of God is devoted to the third topic, the “nature and character of the laws of adoption, or the invariable rule by which aliens are admitted into the kingdom as citizens.” This rule, of course, is: faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; repentance from sin; baptism, by immersion, administered by a servant with authority from God, for the remission of sin; and the gift of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands.

Part III opens with the fourth topic “the nature and character of the laws given for the government of all adopted citizens.” While the “historical parts of the Bible . . . are not intended to govern the actions of modern christians,” it states, the moral law never changes, and “wherever the kingdom of God is established, these laws exist in full force as rules of faith and practice.” Further, it argues that “there is no period, nor year, nor generation, nor age wherein new revelations are not needed among the people of God,” and individuals in the kingdom are protected from false revelations by the gift of the Holy Ghost. The last two pages of part III deal with the fifth topic: “the character, disposition, and qualifications necessary for every citizen to possess.” In this regard, it suggests, citizens of the Kingdom should not only “find out the will of God, but . . . do it”; they should calmly and simply pray, without vain repetitions; they should cultivate characters and disposition that “correspond in every respect with the teachings of the word and spirit of Christ”; and they should feed the hungry, clothe the naked, administer to the widow and the fatherless, visit the sick, and let “love abound unto all men.”

Most of part IV treats the sixth topic, “the rights, privileges, and blessings enjoyed by the subjects in this life.” Primary among these blessings are the gifts of the Spirit—the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, healing the sick, miracles, tongues, revelations, visions, protection from deadly things, for example—and the tract argues at length that these were not limited to the time of Jesus but are always present when God’s kingdom is on the earth. These gifts are bestowed, it continues, for the blessing, perfecting, and edifying of the saints, and to “keep them from delusion.” The seventh topic, “the rights, privileges, and blessings, promised to the faithful obedient subjects in a future life,” occupies just three paragraphs. “Eternal life is the greatest of all the gifts of God,” the tract asserts, and quoting John 17:3, Matthew 11:27, and Matthew 16:17, it concludes that “eternal life can only be enjoyed by a people who believe in, and receive new revelation.”

387 [Printed handbill informing the public that the Latter-day Saints are opening a preaching room in Ashton-under-Lyne on Sunday, October 22, 1848. Ashton-under-Lyne? 1848]

What is known about this handbill comes from a letter of John Albiston Jr. to Orson Pratt, dated November 11, 1848, in the Millennial Star of December 15:

But, sir, I have to inform you that we have now taken our light from under the bushel; we no longer trace the dark entry, and through the back yard, and up a long flight of steps, but we have got a commodious room, and we have fitted it up with forms of a new style, at considerable trouble and expense; it will seat upwards of two hundred comfortably. One of the brethren has given a pair of excellent stone door posts and a door, which we have got put in next to the front street, which makes it very public. Another brother has brought a large organ (which he had) into the room. Upon the whole we are very comfortable and our room is well attended. . . . We had a splendid tea party on Saturday, Oct. 21, when upwards of two hundred and fifty sat down to a full board of rich dainties; after which Elder R. Cook, president of the Manchester Conference, and Harrison Burgess bore their testimonies to the truth of the work of God. . . . This opening was made known to the public by printed bills . . . [informing] the public, that the Latter-day Saints were opening a Preaching Room in Ashton-under-Lyne, on Sunday, October 22nd.

John Albiston Jr. had been presiding over the branch at Ashton-under-Lyne since April 1844 and undoubtedly published the handbill.¹ The son of patriarch John Albiston (see item 185), he was born in Cheshire, April 4, 1814, joined the Church in 1840, and served successive terms as president of the Sheffield and Bradford conferences before immigrating to Utah in 1854. Six years later he settled in Richmond, Cache County, where he lived out his life, interrupted by a mission to England, 1868–71. He died near Franklin, Idaho, two days before his seventy-seventh birthday.²

388 GIBSON, William. [Handbill advertising two lectures by Orson Pratt. Edinburgh? 1848]

William Gibson records in his journal that in October 1848 he received word that Orson Pratt was coming to visit the scene of his former labors and would like to preach again in Edinburgh (see items 76, 82). “I accordingly went & took the best Lecture Rooms in the City,” Gibson continues, “the Waterloo Rooms opposite the Post office for two nytes & got large Poster Bills up stating that a Living Apostle was going to Preach there, as I was determined to rouse the sleepy inhabitants if Possible.” The first evening, he reports, the large hall was crowded and included a great many clergymen and students who were identified by their college dress and “were always a rough wild set.” That night Orson Pratt spoke on the first principles of the gospel and, although often disturbed, was able to finish his lecture. On the second night, however, some in the audience called out for a debate. Pratt responded that he had come to lecture and would not be forced into a debate, but the audience would not accept this and became so noisy that he terminated the meeting.¹

Item 388 is the second of five handbills Gibson identifies in his journal, all unlocated (see item 372).

389 [Catalogue. Liverpool? 1848]

The European Mission financial records indicate that on November 14, 1848, the mission office sent out to the various branches almost 700 copies of an item entered in the records as “Catalogues &c.”¹ Nothing else is known about such an item, so one is left to guess that it was a catalogue of publications.

390 FLANIGAN, James Henry. [Awful Apostacy of the Church!!! The Gospel restored by an Angel!!! The Kingdom of God organized with Apostles & Prophets according to the pattern. Cambridge, 1848]

Broadside?

James H. Flanigan arrived in Liverpool from America on October 5, 1848, and was immediately assigned to the Bedfordshire Conference. On the 12th he came to Bedford, a place, he complained in his diary, where “every thing seemes to be dead & buried.” Three weeks later he met Thomas Smith, the conference president, with whom he would travel from time to time during his stay in Bedfordshire (see items 431, 447).¹

Flanigan went to Cambridge on November 16, and the following day he “got 150 Bills printed to notify the Town.” On Saturday, the 18th, he rented the Odd Fellows Hall at 2s. per week, and on Sunday he preached three times to about twenty-five, who, he wrote, would “require a Shower of fire & brimstone!! or an Earth quake!!! to wake them up!!!” Eighteen more days would pass before he would baptize his first convert. No copy of Flanigan’s Cambridge handbill is located; the title above comes from his diary.²

391 [Handbill advertising William Gibson’s lecture in Dunfermline in response to the pamphlet Remarks on Mormonism. Dunfermline? 1848]

Shortly before Orson Pratt came to Edinburgh in October 1848 (see item 388), William A. Macmaster, the presiding elder in Dunfermline, sent William Gibson a copy of the anonymous anti-Mormon pamphlet Remarks on Mormonism, Occasioned by the Question of Orson Pratt, a Mormon Apostle, “Was Joseph Smith Sent of God?” [Glasgow: Printed by Bell and Bain, 1848?]. Gibson sent the tract to Orson Pratt in Liverpool and went to Dunfermline in November to lecture in response. “Bills were put up,” he records,

announcing that [I] would Preach on Sabbath fore & after noon & in the Evening [in] reply to the Pamphlet I had good meetings through the day & in the Evening the Room & Stairs were Crowded & I was told hundreds had to go away in case of disturbance we had asked some of the Police to attend some of them came but there was no disturbance the people listened very attentively & dismissed in peace.¹

While in Dunfermline, Gibson learned that the author of Remarks on Mormonism was Joseph N. Paton, “a man of Respectability & good Education . . . a preacher among the Swedenborgens,” with whom he had once debated in Oakley, a few miles from Dunfermline. Gibson sent this information to Orson Pratt, who used Paton’s name in his reply to Remarks on Mormonism (items 406–8).²

392 A collection of sacred hymns, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Europe. Selected by Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt, and John Taylor. Seventh edition. Liverpool: Published and sold by Orson Pratt, 15, Wilton Street, Soho Street; and sold by the agents throughout England. 1848.

352 pp. 10 cm.

The sixth European hymnal (item 364) had been in print only about three months when the Millennial Star of November 1, 1848, noted that a new edition was in press and would be out “in a few days.” Two weeks later the Star indicated that the hymnbook had been delayed but promised it in two weeks, and on December 1 it announced that the book was “now ready.” Its retail price was 1s. 6d. each, the same as the 1847 and 1849 editions (see items 252, 340, 434). Richard James charged £53 for printing the edition, and Thomas Fazakerley charged £50 for binding it in sheep.¹

The European Mission financial records indicate that the mission office began filling orders for the new edition on November 25 and sold 579 copies on the 29th. Published by Orson Pratt in 4,000 copies, the seventh edition remained in print less than ten months and was followed by an eighth edition of 10,000 (item 434).²

The seventh European hymnal is essentially a line-for-line reprint of the sixth with a few changes in punctuation and a change of meter in hymn 141.³ It collates: title page (p. [1]), with Liverpool: Printed by Richard James, 39 B, South Castle Street on the verso; preface to the 1840 edition (p. [3]); preface to the seventh edition, signed and dated by Orson Pratt at Liverpool, November 30, 1848 (p. [4]); the texts of 283 numbered hymns (pp. [5]–342); and an index of first lines (pp. [343]–352). The only located copy—which is in private hands—is bound in black blind-stamped sheep, a circular design within a wide ornamental border on the covers, the backstrip plain except for the title in gilt.

Flake-Draper 1765a.

393 PRATT, Orson. Remarkable visions. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 6. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool—December 14, 1848. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [Liverpool, 1848] [Last word on p. 1:] directions.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

394 PRATT, Orson. Remarkable visions. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] No. 6 [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, December 14th, 1848. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1850?] [Last word on p. 1:] re-.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

During the early 1840s, Orson Pratt’s Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions demonstrated itself to be useful missionary tool, so it is not surprising that soon after returning to Great Britain he included a new edition in his arsenal of tracts. This new edition, now with the shortened title Remarkable Visions, was the sixth of the sixteen tracts he published during his mission, intended as part of a series of pamphlets following the Kingdom of God—hence the number 6 at the head of the tract’s title (see items 367–70, 373–86, 436–38). The Millennial Star announced in its issue of November 15, 1848, that Remarkable Visions would soon be “republished,” and two weeks later it reported that it was in press; on December 15 it noted that the tract was “just published” and for sale at 10s. per hundred, £4 10s. per thousand, and £20 per five thousand.¹

Item 393 gives Manchester, Ontario County, on p. 12, line 9, as the place where the Church was organized—following the four earlier editions (items 82, 109–10, 147). And the Star of November 1, 1850, points out that this should be corrected to read Fayette, Seneca County.² Inasmuch as item 394 makes this correction and is the edition that occurs in the first O. Pratt’s Works, one infers that item 393 is the first edition and item 394 was printed no later than January 1851 (see item 551). The European Mission financial records show 18,023 copies of Remarkable Visions in the mission office on December 21, 1850, so item 394 was undoubtedly printed before then, probably in November or December. Between December 11, 1848, and December 21, 1850, the Millennial Star office sent out about 18,200 copies of Remarkable Visions.³ Since it is clear that the numbers recorded in the financial records for Orson Pratt’s Great First Cause do not include those copies bound in O. Pratt’s Works that he took to America (see item 543), it is likely that the numbers above also do not include those copies of Remarkable Visions that he bound in O. Pratt’s Works. One might guess, therefore, that the two editions totaled about 40,000 copies. In 1851 Charles W. Wandell and John Murdock published an edition in Sydney, Australia (item 631). That year Erastus Snow published a Danish translation (item 602), and Lorenzo Snow incorporated a French translation in his La Voix de Joseph (item 558).

Item 393 was reprinted from the 1840 edition (item 82) with five paragraphs added at the end just preceding the last paragraph—as well as with four trivial word changes, an insignificant deletion of a word, and numerous changes in punctuation. The added text speaks of the judgments awaiting the wicked, a refuge for the righteous, a temple to be built “upon Mount Zion,” and the restoration of the ten tribes, and although it treats similar themes, it is a different text from the four paragraphs added at the same point in the New York editions (items 109–­10, 147). Item 394 was reprinted from item 393 with a few improvements in punctuation, a spelling correction, two misprints, and the insertion of the phrase of the Book of Mormon in the last paragraph of p. 15—in addition to the correction of Manchester, Ontario County to Fayette, Seneca County mentioned above.

Item 393: Flake-Draper 6516. NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 394: Flake-Draper 6516a. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU.

395 ROBERTS, Sidney. Great distress and loss of the lives of American citizens. An appeal to the citizens of the United States, for and in behalf of suffering humanity, in the western state of Iowa, and in the Indian territory. By Sidney Roberts, of Iowa City, Iowa. [3 lines] December, 1848. [New Haven?]

iv[5]–9[4] pp. Frontis. 19 cm. Ruled border on title page and pp. iii–iv, 5–12. Tannish gray printed wrappers.

Sidney Roberts’s Great Distress seems to have grown out of his visit to the Church leaders at Council Bluffs in March 1848 as the representative of the Iowa Whig Central Committee (see item 361). During this visit he proposed to the Church leaders that he be officially delegated to collect donations from the Whigs for the relief of the Saints, with a 25 percent commission going to him for his efforts.¹ No such appointment is known to have been given him, and it is unlikely that one was; nevertheless he persisted in his plans to collect donations, if not from the Whigs, then from the Church members themselves.

William I. Appleby notes in his journal that Roberts was in Connecticut—his native state—in February 1849 raising funds from the Latter-day Saints there.² At the same time, he was also promoting an enterprise called the Joint Stock Mutual Insurance Merchandizing Company, which was supposed to carry goods and emigrants to California, and in support of this scheme, he published a 12-page pamphlet, To Emigrants to the Gold Region. A Treatise, Showing the Best Way to California, with Many Serious Objections to Going by Sea, Doubling the Cape, or Crossing the Isthmus, with the Constitution and Articles of Agreement, of the Joint Stock Mutual Insurance Merchandizing Company.³ Which of these activities offended Appleby is not clear, but that February he wrote to Wilford Woodruff that “Sidney Roberts is an imposture & has collected $70 of the New Haven Branch &c.” Eight months later Roberts was disfellowshipped by the high council at Kanesville. Apparently he reconciled himself with the Church soon after, for at the time of the 1850 census he was living in Pottawattamie County, and that year he made the trek to Utah.⁴

Roberts undoubtedly published Great Distress as part of his fund-raising effort in Connecticut. His To Emigrants to the Gold Region is dated on the title page January 1, 1849, and was published in New Haven, so he likely had Great Distress printed there as well. Great Distress opens with Roberts’s preface (pp. [iii]–iv), which refers to his visit to Council Bluffs in March 1848, recounts the suffering he claims to have seen there, and asks for contributions of “money, clothing, or any other article of comfort” for the relief of the Saints. His “Appeal, &c.” (pp. [5]–7) gives a brief history of the Mormons, including the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, the evacuation of Nauvoo, and the call of the Mormon Battalion. The concluding two paragraphs of this appeal are in the form of an endorsement from some unidentified group and include the statement that Roberts had “been requested by the sufferers to solicit aid in their behalf”—perhaps the basis for Appleby branding him an impostor. Page 8 comprises an index listing the states, numbered 1 through 30, beginning with Maine and ending with Iowa. Page 9, headed Certificate, contains the letter of recommendation for Roberts signed by a number of leading Iowa Whigs, dated at Iowa City, March 3, 1848—written in anticipation of his trip to Council Bluffs that month. Pages [10]–[12] are blank, except for a heading Names—Town—County, and were to be used to record the names and residences of those contributing aid. The pamphlet was issued in tannish-gray printed wrappers, the title page reprinted from the same setting on the front, an illustration on the back, and the interior plain.

There are two illustrations with the pamphlet in addition to the one on the back wrapper. The first forms a frontispiece, labeled “cut showing the general appearance of Council Bluffs, on the West side of the Missouri River, where the Mormons pitched their tents in the fall of 1846, and built a city of 800 houses in three weeks. . . .” The second, comprising p. [13], is a “cut showing something of the appearance of the Mormons leaving the city of Nauvoo, February 1st, 1846.” And the illustration on the back wrapper is “a partial view of the massacre of the Mormons.” All of these scenes, however, appear to be unrelated to the Mormons and were undoubtedly borrowed from other sources. The illustration on the wrapper, for instance, is a depiction of the Boston massacre, based on Paul Revere’s famous engraving.

Flake-Draper 7383. CtY, DLC, MH.

396 BROWN, Thomas Dunlop. Letter to W. Cunningham [sic], Esq. T. D. Brown’s letter to W. Cunningham [sic], Esq., of Lainshaw, Ayrshire, author of various works on the writings of the Jewish prophets, the millennium, &c. [Caption title] [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [Liverpool, 1848?]

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

Letter to W. Cunningham consists of T. D. Brown’s letter to Cunningham, dated at the end, Liverpool, November 6, 1848 (pp. [1]–10); a letter from his wife, Sarah Brown, addressed to “Dear Friends and Relations,” signed at the end and dated at Liverpool, December 13, 1848 (pp. 10–11); a note concurring with Sarah Brown’s sentiments, signed by her sons William and John Sherratt (p. 11); and T. D. Brown’s “Letter of Warning,” addressed “To my Relations and Friends,” dated at Liverpool, December 16, 1848 (pp. 11–16). The letter to Cunningham is printed in the Millennial Star of November 15 and December 1, 1848—from the same setting. Mrs. Brown’s letter and her sons’ note are printed in the Star of January 1, 1849, also from the pamphlet setting, and T. D. Brown’s “Letter of Warning” is reprinted in the Star of February 1, 1849, again from the pamphlet typesetting. One might guess, therefore, that the tract was printed near the end of the year. Brown’s letter to Cunningham was reprinted in the Frontier Guardian of May 16 and 30, 1849, from the Millennial Star.

Thomas D. Brown married Sarah Godwin Sherratt about 1840 (see item 326). A woman of means, she was born in Staffordshire, October 18, 1800, and was the widow of Smith Sherratt by whom she had two sons, William, and John—who was deaf and mute because of a childhood case of scarlet fever. William was baptized into the Church in November 1843, seven months before his stepfather; Sarah joined the Church in 1845; John, the following year. In 1849 they settled in Kanesville, and on March 7, 1850, William Sherratt died there, at age twenty-seven. Immigrating to Utah in 1852, T. D. and Sarah Brown settled in Salt Lake City, where he died in 1874 and she died on July 16, 1881. John Sherratt made his home in Cedar City, married, and raised a large family. He died at Cedar City, January 18, 1899, five days before his seventy-first birthday.¹

William Cuninghame (not Cunningham) lived at Lainshaw, his estate near Stewarton, Ayrshire, Scotland, where T. D. Brown was born. A bachelor, he was well known in the region for his “piety and benevolence,” and for his writings on religious subjects.² Brown had attended his Sunday School classes as a boy and had discussed Mormonism with him shortly before he joined the Church. In September 1848 he happened to meet Cuninghame, who during this conversation declared, “I cannot give you the right hand of fellowship. You have departed from the Lord.” ³ Just before he and his family left for America, T. D. Brown wrote his letter to Cuninghame, as well as his “Letter of Warning” and two other articles for the Star—the first, dated March 18, in the issue of April 1, 1849, the second, dated March 23, in the issues of February 15 and July 15, 1849.

Brown opens his letter to Cuninghame by reminding him of their earlier associations, and then he moves to a defense of Mormonism’s basic tenets, particularly those of baptism by immersion, the impropriety of baptizing infants, and the reality of revelation from God and miraculous gifts among believers. He closes by calling on Cuninghame to “repent, and be baptized by one having authority.” Sarah Brown’s letter also focuses on the Church’s first principles. T. D. Brown’s letter of warning explains that he is leaving his native land for a strange country because “this is the hour of God’s judgments,” and there will be a great gathering of His followers in the last days, in America, in the tops of the mountains.

Flake-Draper 914. UPB, USlC.

397 BARNES, Lorenzo Don. Very important references, to prove the religion and principles of the Latter Day Saints, to be true. By Lorenzo D. Barnes. Norwich: Printed by A. Charlwood, Orford Hill. 1848.

8 pp. 11.5 cm.

This edition of Lorenzo D. Barnes’s References—issued six years after his death—was undoubtedly published by Thomas Smith, who continued to be the principal proselytizing force in Norwich after he first brought the Mormon message to that area in May 1847 (see items 115–16, 152, 332, 333). It is essentially a line-for-line reprint of the 1842 Bradford edition (item 152) including the “Chronology of Time” (pp. 7–8), which ends in 1842 as in the Bradford edition—with only a few trivial differences in punctuation in the biblical citations. Moreover, it copies the format of the 1842 edition, including the various type styles and wavy rules.

Flake-Draper 312. CU-B.

398 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Sylwadau ar bregeth ynghylch “Saint y Dyddiau Diweddaf a doniau gwyrthiol.” [Caption title] [Observations on a sermon about “the Latter-day Saints and miraculous gifts.”] [At foot of p. 8:] Argraffwyd gan J. Davis, Caerfyrddin. [Printed by J. Davis, Carmarthen.] [1848?]

8 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722v. Dennis 22. CU-B, MH, NjP, USlC.

399 Udgorn Seion, neu Seren y Saint. [Zion’s Trumpet, or Star of the Saints.] Carmarthen: January 1849–February 1849; Merthyr Tydfil: March 1849–August 1854; Swansea: September 1854–March 1861; Liverpool: April 1861–April 1862.

14 v. ([469] nos. in [7,792] pp.) 17.5 cm.

Flake-Draper 9069. Dennis 23. CSmH[v. 1, 4–7], CtY[v. 1–2], CU-B[v. 1–3], MH[v. 1–6, 8–9], NjP[v. 1–6], UPB[v. 1–9], USlC[v. 1–11], UU[v. 3, 7], WHi[v. 1–3, 6], WsN[v. 1–2, 5–7, 12–14], WsS[v. 4, 9].