Winter 1986
The Winter 1986 issue focuses on various aspects of early Mormon history, particularly through the lens of Joseph Smith and his context. Alan Taylor begins with an exploration of the treasure-seeking practices that surrounded Joseph Smith. Ronald W. Walker reflects on Martin Harris, an early convert to Mormonism, while a panel discusses the work of document diggers and their discoveries related to the faith. Cheryl L. May addresses the context surrounding the documents that emerged, leading to discussions on the Hofmann case and its implications. Allen D. Roberts highlights six key issues stemming from this case, and Jeffrey O. Johnson offers an archivist's perspective on the damage caused. James B. Allen presents a historian's approach to these documents, while Richard P. Howard discusses the role of revisionist history among document diggers. Curt Bench provides a dealer's perspective on document dealing. And much more!
Dialogue 19.4 (Winter1986): 18–28
Taylor identifies the history behind the Smith Family and treasure seeking. During the 19th century treasure seeking is associated with both greed, but also obtaining spirtual knowledge like in Joseph Smith’s case.
It began in the autumn of 1874 with a knock that interrupted Pilkingtons’ evening devotions. The stranger at the door explained that he wished to hire a boy to do chores and promised room, board,…
Mormon history has always been a hot topic. From the earliest days of Church history over a century and a half ago, vastly divergent accounts of the origins and development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been penned and published. In many cases, controversies about LDS historical topics have spilled over into the national press. In the last generation, for example, disputes about the accuracy of Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History and Juanita Brooks’s Mountain Meadows Massacre have been avidly covered in national newspapers and magazines.
I believe that a response to the point of view represented on the panel by Jeffery O. Johnson is appropriate. I also believe that what I say here would fairly represent most rare book and manuscript dealers as well as some archivists and librarians who acquire and manage rare books and manuscripts for large institutions. However, this is a personal statement and I alone am responsible for its content.
Dialogue 19.4 (Winter 1986): 77–85
The role of leadership within the Mormon community is vastly interrelated, and thus often confused , with management.
In the early 1960s, a crisis occurred in the academic field of the philosophy of science, spilling over into the philosophy of history and the philosophy of social sciences. The crisis emerged from research in…
These were the words of Brigham Young to his Mormon followers at the first Sunday services held at Winter Quarters on a wind-swept rise of land on the west side of the city’s proposed Main Street. Daniel H. Wells and William Cutler had brought the sobering news into camp just two days before that Nauvoo had been overrun in the skirmish known as the Nauvoo Battle. The subsequent sufferings of the dispossessed and starving citizens of Nauvoo spurred Brigham and his fellow apostles into even greater relief action than that already underway. “Let the fire of the covenant which you made in the House of the Lord, burn in your hearts, like flame unquenchable,” he re minded the Saints, “till you, by yourselves or delegates . . . [can] rise up with his team and go straightway and bring a load of the poor from Nauvoo . . . [for] this is a day of action and not of argument” (Journal History, 28 Sept. 1846).
Shortly after sunrise Otis Wadby was driving to work in Circleville. He stayed nights with his son in Junction, his wife having expelled him from his home in Circleville because he had taken up with…
Science is full of strange twists and unexpected developments—so many, in fact, that we are rarely surprised anymore by its most recent revelations. But one of the biggest scientific surprises of the twentieth century has…
When my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Abigail, and I went to the hospital, I left the pie crusts and rolls I had mixed up that morning on the kitchen table along with the dress pattern I had bought for my new niece. It had been months since I had felt this energetic, and so that morning I had begun a few projects while I waited for our sixth child to be born. The telephone awakened me from my after-lunch nap; the pediatrician wanted to see me in his office to discuss Abby’s blood test results.
When Sarah Roundy Sylvester was fighting death in the fall of 1938 she must have felt her life was unsuccessful. The promises of a good education, the status of a significant and unusual Church assignment,…
As a school teacher in Tooele—junior high science/English—I carpool the forty miles from Salt Lake City every day. I had always assumed, as teens turned into twenties, that someday I would be married and raise…
In barns turned from the wind
The quarter-horses
Twitch their laundered blankets.
Three Steller’s jays,
The sound burrs in my head
like a racket of angry birds
swirling from the sky.
He’s gone again;
The eyes of the beasts shine into my own.
The archangel’s hair is on fire. I stumble
through the mudprints of cows and ewes
toward the damp side of the cave
For nearly a decade, since Mary Bradford approached me early one Sunday morning with the exciting opportunity of becoming part of the DIALOGUE staff, “Among the Mormons” has been a dear friend. Preparing this, my…
Dialogue 19.4 (Winter 1988):157–192
The major problem with the “Study” is that, if one takes it as anything more than an analysis of possibilities, it must be viewed as an example of the genetic fallacy (that something can be explained solely by its cultural context).
As Carol Flake observes, 1976 seemed to be “the year of the evangelical” as the media focused its attention on Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian who taught Sun day School in his small Georgia hometown…
Firmly established in Mormon history is Joseph Smith’s 1834 crusade from Kirt land, Ohio, to the borders of Jackson County, Missouri, to “redeem Zion.” Its purpose was to assist Latter-day Saints lately driven from their…
