Item Detail
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9871
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28
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12
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English
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Joseph Smith's New York Reputation Reappraised
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BYU Studies
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Spring 1970
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10
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283-314
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"The biographer of Joseph Smith's early life will know his subject when he relies on sources that know their subject. This truism is more obvious in statement than application, for non-Mormon biography has not faced the severe limitations of the uniformly hostile affidavits taken by a sworn enemy of the Mormon Prophet. The image thus obtained is sharply discordant from the Joseph Smith documented in the 1830's: a leader of physical prowess and vigorous manhood, a profound idealist with spontaneous humor and warmth, who displayed personal courage under tremendous odds. A similar youth in the 1820's is discovered, not by editing out non-Mormon sources, but finding those non-Mormon sources that reflect definite contact with Joseph Smith. Such a study shows that collecting informed statements about the Prophet will produce a substantial favorable judgment. Although initial collection of statements against Joseph Smith is an oft-told story, its outline is a necessary background for the affidavits to be analyzed. D. P. Hurlbut, excommunicated twice by LDS tribunals for immorality; became so personally vindictive that he was put under a court order restraining him from doing harm to the person or property of Joseph Smith. He was next "employed" by an anti-Mormon public committee to gather evidence to "completely divest Joseph Smith of all claims to the character of an honest man. . . ." To achieve this goal he traveled to New York and procured statements at Palmyra Village, the largest business center adjacent to the Smith farm and also at Manchester, the rural district that included "Stafford Street." Cornelius Stafford, then twenty, later remembered that Hurlbut arrived at "our school house and took statements about the bad character of the Mormon Smith family, and saw them swear to them." The Painesville, Ohio, editor, E. D. Howe, replaced Hurlbut as a respectable author, and published the affidavits in Mormonism Unvailed(1834), laying the cornerstone of anti-Mormon historiography. Howe lived to see the solidity of the edifice, observing forty-four years afterward in his memoirs that the book "has been the basis of all the histories which have appeared from time to time since that period touching that people." More accurately, Howe's writing was insignificant, but the Palmyra-Manchester affidavits published by him have introduced Joseph Smith in every major non-Mormon study from 1834 to the present. Yet even supposedly definitive studies display no investigation of the individuals behind the Hurlbut statements, nor much insight into their community." [Publisher's abstract]
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Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith
A Modern Malleus maleficarum
Anti-Mormon Publications
A Peculiar People : Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America
Dealing with Personal Injustices : Lessons from the Prophet Joseph Smith
DNA Mormon: Perspectives on the Legacy of Historian D. Michael Quinn
Early Mormon Pamphleteering
East of Nauvoo: Benjamin Winchester and the Early Mormon Church
In Harmony? Perceptions of Mormonism in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania
Joseph Smith and the 1834 D.P. Hurlbut Case
Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism
Joseph Smith's First Vision : Confirming Evidences and Contemporary Accounts
Knowing Brother Joseph Again : Perceptions and Perspectives
Manchester as the Site of the Organization of the Church on April 6, 1830
Martin Harris : Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon
Mormon Opposition Literature : A Historiographical Critique and Case Study, 1844-57
No Weapon Shall Prosper : New Light on Sensitive Issues
Pearl of Great Price Reference Companion
Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon
Review Of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989-2011
Saints, Slaves, and Blacks : The Changing Place of Black People within Mormonism
Secular or Sectarian History? : A Critique of No Man Knows My History
Seeking Divine Interaction : Joseph Smith's Varying Searches for the Supernatural
The First Vision Controversy : A Critique and Reconciliation
The Mormon Experience : A History of the Latter-day Saints
The Pearl of Great Price : A verse-by-verse commentary
The Place of Joseph Smith in the Development of American Religion : A Historiographical Inquiry
The Prophet Puzzle : Suggestions Leading Toward a More Comprehensive Interpretation of Joseph Smith -
A New Witness for Christ in America
Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations
Circumstantial Confirmation of the First Vision Through Reminiscences
History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Period I : History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, by Himself
Mormonism Unvailed : Or, a Faithful Account of That Singular Imposition and Delusion From Its Rise to the Present Time
No Man Knows My History : The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet
Origin, Rise and Progress of Mormonism
The Early Days of Mormonism
The Myth Makers
The Reliability of the Early History of Lucy and Joseph Smith
The Story of the Mormons : From the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901
The True Origin of Mormon Polygamy