In January 1833, Joseph Smith wrote to W. W. Phelps,

who was then the editor of the Evening in the Morning Star,

asking him to make that newspaper more interesting by setting forth the rise, progress, and faith of the Church.

Three months later, Phelps responded with a short article detailing the growth of the Church since its founding.

Although Phelps’s article was the first assigned history of the Church to appear in print,

Joseph Smith assigned at least 10 different individuals to write

or help to write a history of the Church. Volume 1 of the Histories series includes histories personally written by Joseph Smith or produced under his close supervision. Volume 2 presents for other histories assigned by Joseph Smith

but not directly supervised by him.

The earliest assignment to write a history was to John Whitmer when he was called his Church Historian in 1831. Eventually, Whitmer produced a 96-page handwritten history of the Church. The first part of his manuscript ends with a plea for forgiveness of his faults.

But Whitmer later came back and crossed out those last few lines of contrition.

He then wrote three more chapters that reflected his bitterness and disillusionment with the Church.

John Corrill was called as Church historian after John Whitmer’s excommunication.

Corrill published his history independently in 1839,

and Joseph Smith asked Edward Partridge to compile a list of grievances related to the Mormon War in Missouri.

Partridge responded with a series of articles published in the Times and Seasons.

All four histories in this volume were written in response to assignments by Joseph Smith,

but they're really different from one another.

Two of the histories in the volume, those by Phelps and Partridge, are sympathetic portrayals of the Saints. The other two, by Whitmer and Corrill,

were written by men who had become disaffected and left the Church. But taken together,

these four histories enrich our understanding of the history of the Church.