Finding Meaning in the Numbers: Insights from the JSP’s Financial Records

After seven years spent publishing nearly two thousand documents, we are celebrating the completion of the Financial Records series, an online-only series of the Joseph Smith Papers focused on publishing Joseph Smith’s financial documentary record.

Financial records can be difficult to understand. The documents were sometimes written quickly, leading to smudged or illegible ink. They might be working records, used by more than one scribe over years, leaving layers of overwriting and marginal notes. Also, clerks often copied repetitive information using abbreviations or ditto marks that can obscure their meaning.

Despite the challenges of reading and understanding these records, they show us a different side of Joseph Smith’s story: the material culture of his world, the debts and financial requests he dealt with daily, and his interactions with his fellow Latter-day Saints.

Identifying the Saints

Financial records identify thousands of Saints interacting with Joseph Smith, sometimes only in small ways that might otherwise have gone unrecorded. Some names are in store records or other business transactions. Of special note are the individuals who donated tithing to the Nauvoo temple and had their names recorded in the Book of the Law of the Lord.

A Cultural Inventory

The financial documents are also valuable for their window into the material culture of the period. Store and tithing records were filled with goods that we had to work to identify. Many of these items, like spiders for cooking, twifflers for serving, and a range of patent medicines were commonplace in the nineteenth century but are largely unknown to readers today. This led us to create a robust financial glossary that defines a range of objects, fabrics, and other terms.

The Reality of Debt

The documents contained in this series make it clear that debt was an overwhelming reality of the nineteenth century. Funding growth often meant going into debt and hoping to sell or earn enough to repay it. Joseph Smith did this time and again as he built temples and new communities with very few resources. This was a financial burden that Joseph often bore alone. He did not want others to suffer under the church’s debts, so he generously took them on himself.

Knowing Brother Joseph

Joseph Smith’s generosity is clearly visible throughout the financial series. In Kirtland records, he consolidated and assumed responsibility for church debts, especially those related to the Kirtland temple. In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith, as trustee, oversaw the church’s land holdings and gave hundreds of acres worth tens of thousands of dollars to poor families who would never be able to pay for it.

Joseph Smith’s financial records can be messy, tedious, and sometimes confusing, but they offer an important, detailed look into his everyday experiences. Joseph Smith’s documentary record is a vast array of different genres, and it is my firm conviction that a study of his financial documents only enriches and deepens our understanding of his life.

To begin studying Joseph Smith’s financial records, see our Introduction to the Financial Records Series.