Volume 2 of the Histories series
features four Church histories written by assignment
from Joseph Smith. The
fourth historian, John Corrill,
deserves to be better known.
In Ohio in 1830, someone
gives Corrill a copy of this new publication
called the Book of Mormon.
He looks at a few pages and
decides it's a fraud.
But to his astonishment, he learned Sidney Rigdon and most
of his congregation have joined the Church. Well, Corrill decides that maybe he
should investigate more closely.
And he's baptized in 1831.
He's called as a counselor in the
bishopric in Jackson County.
And the Saints elect him as their
first representative to the Missouri Legislature.
In 1838, he received the
assignment to write a Church history. He did go ahead
and write the history, but it didn't turn out to be the institutional record that
Joseph Smith had anticipated.
As the struggles in Missouri
became more and more severe,
Corrill felt that Joseph Smith’s
leadership had become really authoritarian, and his concluding
words are heartbreaking.
He’s discouraged; he’s
disappointed.
He’s given so much of himself
to the Church. But now he says that as
far as he can see,
plan after plan has
been overthrown,
and our prophet has seemed not to
know the event until too late.
Corrill’s document is a hybrid.
In part, it is a Church history
with wonderful eyewitness accounts. And in part,
it’s Corrill’s personal story of
how he came to join the Church
and then why he left the Church.
He was excommunicated in 1839.
So if we're looking for
an inspiring story of a pioneer who valiantly triumphed
over every challenge,
we wouldn't choose this one.
But if we want to understand how
complex and how destructive
the Missouri struggles
really were, what Joseph Smith was
going through,
just trying to keep the Church
together and what the members were called
upon to endure,
then Corril″s work is really
valuable to us.
His history is
John Corrill’s story,
and it's also part of
Joseph Smith story.