Joseph Smith, Nauvoo Leader with Christian Heimburger

Christian Heimburger

About the Interview: The editors of the Joseph Smith Papers Project spend years poring over the documents that are featured in each volume. After marinating themselves in the record, they become pretty familiar with Joseph’s daily activity for the period.

I asked Christian Heimburger, an editor of the recently released volume 9 of the Document Series, to identify several items that shed light on Joseph’s life in Nauvoo from December 1841 to April 1842.

Below are the documents we discuss:

Joseph Smith as editor of the Times & Seasons

- Revelation, 28 January 1842

- Agreement with Ebenezer Robinson, 4 February 1842

- Editorial, ca. 1 March 1842

- Book of Abraham Excerpt and Facsimile No. 2, 15 March 1842

- Church History, 1 March 1842 (Wentworth Letter)

- Selections from Times and Seasons, 1 and 15 March 1842

An Interesting, Cryptic Letter

- Letter from B. F. Withers, 28 December 1841

Missionary Work and Eastern Branches

- Letter from Eli Maginn, 22 March 1842

- Letter from Erastus Snow, 11 April 1842

- Petition from Philadelphia Branch, 22 April 1842

Missouri and Joseph Smith’s views on Abolitionism

- Letter to John C. Bennett, 7 March 1842

- Letter from John C. Bennett, 8 March 1842

About Our Guest: Christian Heimburger received a B.A. in American Studies from Brigham Young University and Ph.D. in modern American history from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Japanese Americans who left World War II incarceration camps to work in communities around the Mountain West, and is working on a book manuscript based on that dissertation. Christian has taught nineteenth and twentieth-century American history courses at Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University. He is currently employed as a historian and documentary editor at the Joseph Smith Papers, and is a co-editor on Documents: Volume 5, Documents: Volume 9, and Documents: Volume 13.

This podcast is cross-posted with the permission of LDS Perspectives Podcast.

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