Early Mormon Documents, Vol. 5

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 576 pages
• Published by: Signature Books November 1, 2003
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1560851708
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1560851707
• Book Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Weighs: 2.1 pounds

Book Description
Unlike Oliver Cowdery"s grandiloquence and Martin Harris's mercurial temperament, David Whitmer--the third of Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon--was plain-spoken, reliable, and straightforward, as one might expect from someone with his Mennonite upbringing. Readers will notice the care Whitmer takes to avoid exaggeration, for instance. "We did not touch nor handle the plates," he affirmed repeatedly. If he felt a reporter erred either in detail or in conveying the overall spirit of the Three Witnesses' vision of the gold plates, Whitmer quickly followed up with a letter to the editor to set the record straight.

He often availed himself of this option due to the number of interviews he granted to reporters from Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, and elsewhere and to LDS and RLDS leaders whose interviews were published in church periodicals. Through all of these discussions, Whitmer's story remained basically the same, although he occasionally added a detail in response to a specific question or experienced an understandable lapse in memory over a relatively minor point.

What will impress most readers, however, is the effort to be candid. People found him to be friendly, despite a no-nonsense approach to LDS history. He was engaging, open, and also well grounded in the real world, as his election as mayor of Richmond, Missouri, attests. He believed in spirits and visions, but he was not considered to be a fanatic; people felt that he was someone who could be trusted.

He "[h]as a good head and honest face," William Kelley and George Blakeslee wrote of their encounter with Whitmer in 1882. "He talks with ease and seemed at home with every subject suggested; and without an effort, seemingly, went on to amplify upon it, so that we had nothing to do but question, suggest and listen. [H]e studies to express himself in such a way as not to be misunderstood; and it hurts him to be misrepresented." In addition to Whitmer, others from Fayette, New York, where the Book of Mormon was transcribed and the first general church conferences were held, related what transpired there. They include David Whitmer's brother John; Hiram Page, who married Elizabeth Ann Whitmer and was one of the Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon; the Whitmer family's pastor in the German Reformed Church, Diedrich Willers; and others. The latter explained why Mormonism moved from Palmyra to Fayette and how its members grew beyond the founding Smith family to include the Whitmers. Among other things, the Peter Whitmer family, like the Smiths, had previously enjoyed unusual spiritual experiences. "In the month of July," the Reverend Willers noted in 1830, "Joseph Smith, Jr., made his appearance in Seneca county in the neighborhood of Waterloo, about six miles from my residence, where a certain David Whitmer had claimed to have seen an angel of the Lord. Joseph Smith made his way to this man's house in order to bring to pass the translation of the named book with the suggestion that only among such people, who had enjoyed commerce with residents of higher worlds, could he work, and that this was indeed the place where he could do so productively, where people had seen angels."

Publisher Description
In this 5-volume series:
1. The Joseph Smith family and Vermont
2-3: Palmyra, New York, and environs
4: Colesville & South Bainbridge, New York, & Harmony, Pennsylvania
5: Fayette, New York

Reader Reviews
Volume 5 of this series focuses on Mormon origins in Fayette, New York, and as such is primarily based on records regarding the Whitmer family, including interviews with the last (and most interviewed) of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, David Whitmer. It also contains statements, testimonies, letters and reminiscences by well known early church members: Hiram Page, William E. McClellin, Sidney Rigdon, John Whitmer and Parley P. Pratt. 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. From the Introduction: "The present compilation includes numerous statements by and interviews with David Whitmer, followed by statements of his brother John Whitmer, brother-in-law Hiram Page, sister Elizabeth Ann Whitmer Cowdery, and nephew John C. Whitmer. Also included are accounts by area residents, including the early letters of farmer Lucius Fenn and the Reverend Diedrich Willers; the later statements of Lee Yost, Diedrich Willers, Sr., Diedrich Willers, Jr., and Harrison Chamberlain; and two published histories. Statements from non-residents or visitors to the Fayette area have also been provided. Finally, the miscellaneous documents section contains the Testimony of Three Witnesses, priesthood licences for Joseph Smith, Sr., John Whitmer, and Christian Whitmer, and excerpts from the Far West Record" While this volume, as per the previous volumes, contains mostly *excerpts* of the accounts it publishes, I found it to be personally the best of all five. Comment | | (Report this)