These were handed down to his son who, while living in the Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City in the 1940s, had them on display in his hotel room. Richards of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles acquired several leaves of the manuscript, Jensen said. In that manner, the Church ended up with approximately 28 percent of the manuscript. “The Church leaders couldn’t ask for it wholesale, but if they sent people back in a steady stream, they could get little pieces here and there.” Neilson said missionaries were encouraged to go back to Nauvoo and ask for pieces of the manuscript. “If they went to visit Lewis Bidamon, they would get a keepsake: a fragment of the original Book of Mormon manuscript.” “Members of the Church, when they went on missions, often stopped in the Midwest to visit Church history sites,” Jensen said. “There are very few full leaves, and when they are full, they’re really worn away.”Īfter the manuscript was taken from the cornerstone, it remained in the possession of Lewis Bidamon, who had married Joseph Smith’s widow, Emma. “By the time we get to Alma, it is just falling apart,” he said. Thus, part of the manuscript, beginning with 1 Nephi is fairly well preserved, Jensen said, as he displayed extant portions that were already in the Church’s possession. “Several decades later, when the manuscript was pulled out, water had seeped into the cornerstone, and the manuscript had started to fall apart from the bottom up.” In 1841, Joseph Smith placed the original manuscript in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House, a boarding house in Nauvoo, Illinois, Jensen said. Neilson, assistant Church historian and recorder, and Robin Scott Jensen, associate managing historian and project archivist for the Joseph Smith Papers Project, displayed the newly acquired fragments Wednesday in a meeting with a Church News and a Deseret News reporter at the Church History Library in Salt Lake City. Photographic images of the existing pages or fragments will be published in the forthcoming volume with a typescript copy of the content of each page presented on the facing page in the book. These will be combined with the approximately 28 percent of the manuscript in the department’s possession for publication within the next three or four years as part of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, according to department officials. Now, the Church History Department of the Church has announced the acquisition within the past two months of yet more fragments from that priceless document. The Book of Mormon printer’s manuscript has been published virtually in its entirety, but what LDS historians consider the “crown jewel” of the book’s origin-the original manuscript handwritten as Joseph Smith dictated to scribes his translation of the Nephite record preserved on gold plates-exists only in fragmentary form. Neilson, assistant Church historian and recorder “These leaves and fragments are tangible reminders of Joseph’s encounter with the divine and with the sacred texts.” -Reid L. Photographic images of fragments will be published in the forthcoming volume. Newly acquired fragments are in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery.
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