(MORMONS) Latter Day Saints Messenger and Advocate

Sale 2404 - Lot 188

Price Realized: $ 35,000

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 50,000 - $ 75,000

"THE BASIC SOURCE FOR THE STUDY OF MORMONISM'S OHIO PERIOD" (MORMONS.) Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate. 384 pages (24 monthly issues of 16 pages each). Volumes I and II (of 3), complete in one volume. 8vo, contemporary calf, moderate wear; moderate foxing, minor dampstaining to a few issues, pages 7-10 coming loose, other minor wear. Kirtland, OH: F.G. Williams & Co., October 1834 to September 1836

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The seminal source on the young church's years in Kirtland, OH, and only the second periodical issued by the Latter Day Saints, succeeding the virtually unobtainable Evening and Morning Star. Oliver Cowdery was the editor for most of this span, with 10 issues edited by John Whitmer.
The early issues of the Messenger and Advocate include a series of 8 letters by editor Oliver Cowdery, then one of Joseph Smith's closest associates, which comprise what is considered the first history of the church's formation. Also included are 6 published letters from Joseph Smith (pages 40, 179-182, 209-212, 225-230, 240, 289-291), including the important three-part "To the Elders of the Church of Latter Day Saints."
Several early hymns are printed in the February and March 1836 issues. An interesting article on the Indians by W.W. Phelps appears in the January 1836 issue (pages 245-248): "While we behold the government of the United States gathering the Indians and locating them upon lands to be their own, how sweet it is to think that, they may one day, be gathered by the gospel."
Only three other runs have been noted at auction in the past sixty years, all markedly inferior to the present volume. Crawley 16 ("The basic source for the study of Mormonism's Ohio period"); Flake 4778; Sabin 50743; not in Lomazow. See also Walter W. Smith, "The Periodical Literature of the Latter Day Saints," in Journal of History XIV:3 (July 1921), pages 266-9.