Page 89 - Swann Galleries - Printed & Manuscript Americana - Sale 2310 - April 16, 2013

“THE BASIC SOURCE FOR THE STUDY OF
MORMONISM’S OHIO PERIOD”
190 ● (MORMONS.) Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate. 384
pages (24 monthly issues of 16 pages each). Volumes I and II (of 3), complete in
one volume. 8vo, contemporary calf, moderate wear; moderate foxing, minor
dampstaining to a few issues, pages 7-10 coming loose, other minor wear.
Kirtland, OH: F.G. Williams & Co.,
October 1834 to September 1836 [100,000/150,000]
The seminal source on the young church’s years in Kirtland, OH, and only the second
periodical issued by the Latter Day Saints, succeeding the virtually unobtainable Evening
and Morning Star. Oliver Cowdery was the editor for most of this span, with 10 issues
edited by John Whitmer.
The early issues of the Messenger and Advocate include a series of 8 letters by editor
Oliver Cowdery, then one of Joseph Smith’s closest associates, which comprise what is con-
sidered the first history of the church’s formation. Also included are 6 published letters from
Joseph Smith (pages 40, 179-182, 209-212, 225-230, 240, 289-291), including the
important three-part “To the Elders of the Church of Latter Day Saints.”
Several early hymns are printed in the February and March 1836 issues. An interesting
article on the Indians by W.W. Phelps appears in the January 1836 issue (pages 245-
248): “While we behold the government of the United States gathering the Indians and
locating them upon lands to be their own, how sweet it is to think that, they may one day,
be gathered by the gospel.”
Only three other runs have been noted at auction in the past sixty years, all markedly inferior
to the present volume. Crawley 16 (“The basic source for the study of Mormonism’s Ohio
period”); Flake 4778; Sabin 50743; not in Lomazow. See also Walter W. Smith, “The
Periodical Literature of the Latter Day Saints,” in Journal of History XIV:3 (July 1921),
pages 266-9.