MormonTimes.com: The survival story of Joseph Smith's first journal

A child�s scribbles on an end sheet and in the interior of Joseph Smith�s first known journal may suggest that the prophet and founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an "indulgent father who allowed family access to his personal records."

"We don't really know who or when a child had access to this 1832 journal," explains Christy Best, an archivist involved in the Joseph Smith Papers Project, "but it did happen at some point."

Such interesting discoveries are among the insights uncovered as an army of researchers work to compile the exhaustive series encompassing the collected papers of Joseph Smith. The first volume in the project, published by The Church Historian�s Press, details the first five Smith diaries and journals, covering 1832�1839, and includes entries that he wrote and dictated, as well as many entries composed by scribes.

Smith's first journal, a pocket memory book he purchased in 1832, bears distinguishing markers of the mileage accrued in the journey from Ohio to Salt Lake City.

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