Reminiscences of Joseph, the Prophet

Elder Edward Stevenson’s first-person memories of the Prophet Joseph Smith, whom he first saw in 1834 at Pontiac, Michigan, where the Prophet was welcomed at his widowed mother’s table. He tells of the Pontiac branch, of the Hill Cumorah as he found it on his visits of 1870 and 1871, of the stories Martin Harris told him when he brought Harris to Utah in 1871, of the seven lines of characters taken to Professor Anthon, of the surrender at Far West and Liberty Jail in 1838, and of the martyrdom at Carthage, with his return to both jails in 1888. Around these he sets long passages of scripture, Joseph Smith’s own account of the First Vision and of Moroni, and the words of Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt, General Clark and others. Stevenson reads in his own voice, and everyone he quotes has a voice of their own.

The title page reads “Reminiscences of Joseph, the Prophet, and the Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon. By Elder Edward Stevenson, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Illustrated. Salt Lake City, Utah. Published by the Author. 1893.” The frontispiece portrait is captioned “Born May 1st, 1820, at Gibraltar, Spain.” The preface, signed “The Author,” says the book prints the illustrated lectures he gave in tabernacles and public halls throughout the Territory, repeated on more than 200 occasions, with engravings of the paintings.

The six chapters have no titles, only a printed synopsis, which is read at the start of each chapter; the short titles on the page are ours. The engravings are not shown and their captions are not read. Words left out of quotations, marked “* * *”, and the oaths printed “d—d” are read as a pause. Printer’s slips that would be read wrongly were corrected, among them “breast-pate,” “Kirkland, Ohio” for Kirtland, “raised tip” for “raised up” and five misprinted words in the Liberty Jail revelations (“they bowels,” “think eye,” “for ever and every”); four quotation marks the printer left out or printed wrongly were set where the speaker’s words end. Everything else is read as printed, including the book’s own slips of date and name.

Text produced for Project Gutenberg by the Mormon Texts Project, with thanks to Andy Hobbs and Shawnee Hawkes (released March 10, 2017; most recently updated October 23, 2024). The cover is the book’s own engraved frontispiece, from the Internet Archive’s scan of the 1893 printing.