Church History Library Collections Featured in Saints
Did you know that many of the sources used to write Saints are available at the Church History Library? In this post Kathryn Burnside explains key documents and how you can access them.
There are now two published volumes of Saints available to help you learn about the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in new and exciting ways. The four-volume Church history series is written with rich source material held at the Church History Library. When reading the digital version, you can click on hyperlinked citations and view images of the original documents in the Church History Catalog.
Click on an endnote to open a sidebar with hyperlinked sources.
Digitization of records is happening in tandem with the writing of the volumes. Some sources used in Saints were already available for you to view as part of an ongoing effort to digitize library holdings. Note some of the “Featured Collections” posted on the Catalog home page, including Journal History of the Church, John Taylor Correspondence, and Wilford Woodruff Journals and Letters. But many of the sources used to write the books had not yet been digitized. Digitization requests are submitted to the Church History Library as Saints chapters are reviewed, and many records have now been made digitally available for the first time.
What kinds of historic material held by the Church History Library have been featured in Saints?
Volume 1, The Standard of Truth, covers the Joseph Smith era from 1815 to 1846, including the construction and dedication of the Nauvoo Temple. As you peruse the endnotes in the digital version, you’ll find that this volume relies heavily on documents posted on the Joseph Smith Papers site. The Church History Library holds many of these documents and has made them available for you to view in the Joseph Smith collection, 1827–1844 (MS 155).
In addition, volume 1 references early Church publications that were produced in Joseph Smith’s era to help share information as membership grew—for example, digital images of the Evening and the Morning Star, printed in Independence, Missouri; the Times and Seasons, printed in Nauvoo, Illinois; and the Millennial Star, printed in England.
Journals and autobiographies are essential to providing the point of view of the Saints who lived at the time, and several are used as references in Saints. You might also enjoy additional reading beyond what the book references in manuscripts. For example:
- Oliver Cowdery diary, 1836 January–March (MS 3429)
Many other period documents referred to in Saints, Volume 1 are held and digitized by the Church History Library. For example:
- “Testimony of Martin Harris, 1870,” found within the Edward Stevenson collection, 1849–1922 (MS 4806)
The next book in the series, released in February 2020, is Saints, Volume 2, No Unhallowed Hand. The era presented is 1846 to 1893, beginning with the relocation of Church headquarters to Utah Territory and culminating with the construction and dedication of the Salt Lake Temple. Key library collections to support this volume include:
Another group of documents commonly referenced is the extensive compilation of Historian’s Office files. See, for example:
- Historical Department office journal, 1844–2012 (CR 100 1).
- Historian’s Office general Church minutes, 1839–1877 (CR 100 318).
Publications in this era expanded to meet the interests of specific groups in the Church. The Woman’s Exponent and the Young Woman’s Journal (Harold B. Lee Library) are notable. The Church History Library posts others as well, such as the Juvenile Instructor and the Improvement Era. Less familiar titles include the Mormon and the Contributor.
Saints, Volume 2 could not have been written without referencing Wilford Woodruff’s journals for key events, from the choice of the Salt Lake Temple site to its dedication. Firsthand accounts continue to be employed in the writing to give the reader a sense of being present in this era. See Joseph F. Smith’s reminiscence of crossing the Great Plains with his mother, Mary Fielding Smith, or Augusta D. Stevens’s account of what it was like for her family to join the persecuted Church in Europe and make the arduous trip to Zion.
Whatever kind of source material is referenced, we can thank the Church History Library for bringing the stories of Saints to life and offering connections in an expanded and tangible way. When you click on the Saints hyperlinks, search the Church History Catalog or visit the Church History Library in Salt Lake City; thousands of historical documents are now at your fingertips.