Customer Reviews

Early Mormon Documents (Volume 1)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a collection of primary sources about Joseph Smith, his family and his friends and detractors. The book recreates the original language, which makes it hard to read sometimes, in order to give us a picture of Early Mormonism and Joseph Smith. The book also has several Journals written by Joseph Smith about his life and the early LDS church. The book is well organized and well footnoted making it easy for any researcher or the curious person to find where the actual documents are located. It is recommended to anyone interested in the Mormon Church or is studying it.

Having read enough books on Mormon history citing this book in their bibliography, I finally succumbed and bought all five volumes of Vogel's "Early Mormon Documents".

Dan Vogel is a well known, non-Mormon historian. This collection is his attempt at publishing authentic historical accounts that are not common knowledge to the average inquirer, as well as containing excerpts from well known, published accounts.

My biggest disappointment is that the accounts produced are not complete. Most reproductions end with "...", showing Vogel has only included a portion of the account he thought was worth sharing, and so the collection is only an extract from the original.

Volume 1 focuses on the Smith family documents and contains the following:

Joseph Smith Jr., Collection
Lucy Mack Smith Collection
Joseph Smith, Sr., Collection
William Smith Collection
Katharine Smith Collection
Emma Hale Smith Collection
Relatives of Smiths Collection
Miscellaneous Smith Family Documents

From the Introduction:

"This multi-volume collection of over 450 documents offer readers access to the primary written and printed sources relating to Mormon origins in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania".

In this volume, Vogel has included "all known biographical and autobiographical accounts of Joseph Smith's parents: Joseph Smith, Sr., and Lucy Mack Smith; his siblings: William Smith and Katherine Smith; Joseph Smith, Jr., himself; his wife Emma Hale Smith; and a number of statements by family relatives. Also included are statements about the Smiths from residents of Vermont and New Hampshire as well as various civil records useful for tracing the family's movements and activities in these states."

I must say I was disappointed by the editing. For example, the largest account is from Lucy Mack Smith's history, but again, it is not a complete account. It skips the first 8 chapters, and ends 15 chapters short and is edited throughout: e.g. p.447, footnote 306. "Lucy's description of the Kirkland church...digresses from the purpose of this collection and is therefore deleted."

This is the first in a five-volume set compiled by Dan Vogel. These primary source documents can be located elsewhere. However, it is quite convenient to have them all in a multi-volume collection. These sources are those which are rarely, if ever used by the LDS Church since many, if not most of these documents raise issues regarding early LDS history. The only criticism I have is that the organization of the documents is initially a bit confusing, but works fine once the compiler's system is understood.

Kay Burningham, Attorney

Author of "An American Fraud: One Lawyer's Case against Mormonism"

When I received Early Mormon Documents (Volume 1), I expected an academically researched book by Dan Vogel, that gave a balanced, unbiased, and even approach to early Mormon documents. The first clue that something was terribly wrong was when the book's dedicatory page included names like Fawn Brodie, who is known for her acrimony towards The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So it went with the historical documents of the time, presenting letters and court documents from fundamentally negative perspectives, mainly from those who sought the destruction of early church leaders. Many document are prejudicial, tilted by Vogel's animosity he feels toward Joseph Smith and those associated with him.