Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision

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Primary sources related to Joseph Smith's First Vision

Summary: Original text of Joseph's accounts of the First Vision

Jump to Subtopic:

• Joseph Smith's 1832 account of the First Vision
• Joseph Smith's 1835 accounts of the First Vision
• 1835 (Erastus Holmes account)
• 1840 (Orson Pratt account)
• 1842 (Joseph Smith History of the Church)
• 1842 (Wentworth letter account)
• 1842 (Orson Hyde account)
• 1843 (The Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette)
• 1843 (Levi Richards account)
• 1844 (Daniel Rupp account)
• 1844 (Alexander Neibaur account)
• 1893 (Charles L. Walker account)

1. REDIRECT Template:Critical sources box:Multiple accounts of the First Vision/1832/Doesn't mention persecution/CriticalSources

1. REDIRECT Talk:Plural marriage in the Book of Mormon

1835 (Erastus Holmes account)

Summary: Erastus Holmes account Deseret News 2.15 (May 29, 1852); also in Millennial Star 15. 27 (July 2, 1853): 424; Jessee, The Papers of Joseph Smith, 2: 79-80; cf. Dan Vogel (editor), Early Mormon Documents (Salt Lake City, Signature Books, 1996–2003), 5 vols, 1:207.; DHC 2. 312.

1840 (Orson Pratt account)

1842 (Joseph Smith History of the Church)

Summary: "Joseph Smith’s History of the Church," Times and Seasons 3. 10 (15 Mar. 1842): 726-28

1842 (Wentworth letter account)

Summary: Wentworth letter. (Times and Seasons, 3.9 (1 Mar. 1842), p. 706-710

1842 (Orson Hyde account)

1843 (The Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette)

Summary: “The Prairies, Nauvoo, Joe Smith, the Temple, the Mormons, etc.,” editor, David Nye White, The Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette 58 (September 15, 1843): 3

1843 (Levi Richards account)

Summary: Levi Richards’s diary about Joseph Smith preaching in the summer of 1843 and repeating the Lord’s first message to him that no church was His (see Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of Joseph Smith, 2nd Edition, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996), 215.

1844 (Daniel Rupp account)

Summary: : “Latter Day Saints, by Joseph Smith, Nauvoo, Illinois,” in I. Daniel Rupp, HE PASA EKKLESIA: An Original History of the Religious Denominations at Present Existing in the United States (Philadelphia: J. Y. Humphreys, 1844), pp. 404; The account for Rupp was published in the original history of the Church published in “History of Joseph Smith,” Millennial Star 22. 7 (February 18, 1860): 102-3; also in Dean Jesse, Papers of Joseph Smith, 1:448.

1844 (Alexander Neibaur account)

Summary: Alexander Neibaur Journal, 24 May 1844

1893 (Charles L. Walker account)

Summary: As told by John Alger