The documents that carry the history.
A record is only as strong as the sources behind it. This archive gathers the executive orders, petitions, affidavits, maps, newspaper excerpts, and official statements that carry the history of injustice against Latter-day Saints. These documents are where memory stops being abstract and becomes verifiable. They are the ground on which the rest of this site stands.
Why a primary source archive.
Primary sources are the records left behind by the people who lived the events. They are the governor’s order. The congressional petition. The survivor’s affidavit. The newspaper column. The map of a settlement. The minute book. The receipt. The telegram.
These materials matter because they resist the drift of retelling. A caricature cannot rewrite a signed executive order. A dismissive op-ed cannot erase a survivor’s sworn statement. A lazy summary cannot flatten the physical reality of a city built, lost, and buried in memory. Primary sources hold the story in place.
This archive is designed to help visitors encounter the documents themselves, not only the narratives about them. That is part of what gives this site its weight.
How this archive is organized.
Documents are grouped by category so visitors can browse by the form of evidence they are looking for: state and government actions, personal and community petitions, affidavits and sworn witness accounts, maps and settlement records, newspaper coverage from the period, and official institutional statements. Within each category, items are listed with a short description, a date, and a pointer to the repository where the original is preserved.
Many of these materials are housed at major public archives including the Missouri State Archives, the Joseph Smith Papers project, the Church History Library, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and state historical societies. Where possible, items link out to the holding institution.
Executive orders and state actions.
Documents in which state or federal authority was formally turned against — or, later, formally acknowledged as having wronged — Latter-day Saints.
October 27, 1838
Missouri Executive Order 44
Governor Lilburn W. Boggs directs General John B. Clark that Latter-day Saints must be treated as enemies and be “exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace.”
Repository: Missouri State Archives
June 25, 1976
Missouri Rescission Order
Governor Christopher S. Bond formally rescinds Executive Order 44, stating that Boggs’s directive contravened rights to life, liberty, property, and religious freedom protected by the constitutions of the United States and Missouri.
Repository: Missouri State Archives
July 1, 1862
Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act
Federal legislation punishing bigamy with fine and imprisonment, and limiting the Church’s right to hold property above a specified value. The first major federal statute aimed at Latter-day Saint practice.
Repository: U.S. National Archives
March 22, 1882
Edmunds Act
Federal law criminalizing “unlawful cohabitation” and disqualifying polygamous men and women from voting. Expanded the legal campaign against Latter-day Saint families.
Repository: U.S. National Archives
March 3, 1887
Edmunds-Tucker Act
Federal law disenfranchising all Utah women, dissolving the Corporation of the Church, and directing forfeiture of Church property above $50,000. The high point of federal pressure.
Repository: U.S. National Archives
January 29, 1845
Repeal of the Nauvoo Charter
Illinois legislative act revoking the civic charter that had allowed Nauvoo to organize as a city, accelerating the loss of legal protection for the Saints’ community.
Repository: Illinois State Archives
Petitions and memorials.
Appeals written by Latter-day Saints themselves to state legislatures, Congress, and the federal government, describing their losses and asking for protection, redress, or recognition.
1839–1840
Missouri Redress Petitions
Nearly 700 men and women produced almost 800 documents describing property losses, violence, and expulsion in Missouri. One of the largest contemporaneous records of the 1838 conflict.
Repository: Joseph Smith Papers · Church History Library
November 28, 1843
Memorial to the U.S. Senate and House
Formal appeal from Joseph Smith and other Church leaders to Congress seeking redress for the losses suffered in Missouri and recognition of the federal responsibility to protect minority rights.
Repository: Joseph Smith Papers
1839
Appeals to Martin Van Buren
Direct appeals to the President of the United States seeking federal intervention after the Missouri expulsion. Van Buren’s reply — “Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you” — became part of the historical memory.
Repository: Joseph Smith Papers
Affidavits and witness accounts.
Sworn statements preserved by survivors and witnesses to the violence and expulsion of the 1830s and 1840s. These are the primary record of lived experience.
1839
Amanda Barnes Smith Account
Testimony of a Hawn’s Mill survivor whose husband and son were killed in the attack and whose younger son was critically wounded. One of the most enduring firsthand accounts of the massacre.
Repository: Church History Library
1843
David Lewis Affidavit
Sworn statement describing the Hawn’s Mill attack, including the circumstances surrounding the death of Thomas McBride. A core primary source for understanding the brutality of the assault.
Repository: Joseph Smith Papers
1838–1839
Far West Expulsion Affidavits
Multiple sworn statements from residents of Far West describing the surrender, property losses, forced departure, and militia conduct during the 1838 conflict in Caldwell County.
Repository: Joseph Smith Papers · Church History Library
March 1839
Liberty Jail Letters
Letters written by Joseph Smith and fellow prisoners from Liberty Jail while the Saints were being expelled from Missouri. Portions were later canonized as Doctrine and Covenants sections 121, 122, and 123.
Repository: Joseph Smith Papers
1846
Nauvoo Departure Accounts
Journals and sworn statements from families who crossed the Mississippi during the winter of 1846 or were forced out in the September 1846 battle, describing the conditions of the second expulsion.
Repository: Church History Library
1846–1847
Winter Quarters Journals
Personal journals and community records kept during the extended stay at Winter Quarters, documenting disease, death, organization, and preparation for the westward migration.
Repository: Church History Library
Maps and settlement records.
Cartographic and property records that ground the history in place — where the Saints lived, what they built, and what was left behind.
1830s
Jackson County Plat Maps
Early settlement and property maps showing the Saints’ presence in Jackson County before the 1833 expulsion. Land records that reveal what was purchased, built, and lost.
Repository: Missouri State Archives
1838
Caldwell County Survey
Survey records showing the concentration of Latter-day Saint settlement in Caldwell County, Missouri, including Far West and surrounding communities that were emptied by the 1838–1839 expulsion.
Repository: Missouri State Archives
1840s
Nauvoo City Plat
Original plat of the city of Nauvoo, showing the grid, temple site, and residential blocks that became the center of Latter-day Saint life in Illinois from 1839 until the 1846 departure.
Repository: Church History Library
1846–1847
Pioneer Trail Maps
Contemporary and retrospective maps of the route from Nauvoo across Iowa to Winter Quarters and onward to the Salt Lake Valley, including encampments, river crossings, and burial sites.
Repository: Church History Library · Library of Congress
1838
Hawn’s Mill Site Map
Reconstructed site map showing the blacksmith shop, mill, and surrounding buildings where the October 30, 1838 massacre took place. The burial well is marked.
Repository: Church History Library
1846
Winter Quarters Layout
Settlement plan of Winter Quarters on the Missouri River, where thousands of Saints wintered in 1846–1847 while preparing to continue west. Includes the cemetery where many who died in the camps were buried.
Repository: Church History Library
Newspaper coverage from the period.
Press coverage that shaped public opinion during the years of persecution — both the hostile reporting that fueled expulsion, and the Saints’ own publications attempting to tell their side of the story.
1833
Evening and Morning Star
Church-run newspaper in Independence, Missouri, whose printing press was destroyed by a mob on July 20, 1833. The destruction of the press itself became a primary source in the story of early expulsion.
Repository: Church History Library
1838
Missouri Press Coverage
Reports from Missouri newspapers in the fall of 1838, including exaggerated accounts following the Crooked River skirmish that helped convince many Missourians the Saints were waging an offensive war.
Repository: Missouri State Historical Society
1844
Nauvoo Expositor
Single-issue dissident newspaper whose controversial destruction contributed to the escalating hostilities that led to the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. A pivotal document in the Illinois collapse.
Repository: Church History Library · University of Illinois
1840s–1850s
Times and Seasons
Latter-day Saint periodical published in Nauvoo, containing the Saints’ own documentation of events, testimony of losses, and institutional responses to the attacks against them.
Repository: Church History Library
1870s–1880s
Anti-Polygamy Press
National press coverage from the anti-polygamy era, including sensationalized accounts in Harper’s, Frank Leslie’s, and other illustrated periodicals that helped shape the legislative campaign against the Church.
Repository: Library of Congress · National Archives
1890
Manifesto Coverage
Press coverage surrounding the Manifesto issued by President Wilford Woodruff on September 24, 1890, marking the Church’s public decision to discontinue plural marriage under federal pressure.
Repository: Church History Library · Deseret News
Court records and legal proceedings.
Trial records, court rulings, and legal documents from the major cases that shaped the legal framework around Latter-day Saint practice and rights.
1838–1839
Mormon War Papers
Collection of military orders, correspondence, court-martial records, and related documents from the 1838 Missouri conflict. Preserved by the Missouri State Archives as one of the primary source collections of the period.
Repository: Missouri State Archives
1838
Richmond Hearing
Preliminary court hearing records from Richmond, Missouri, in which Joseph Smith and others were charged with treason and other offenses following the surrender at Far West.
Repository: Missouri State Archives · Joseph Smith Papers
1878
Reynolds v. United States
U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing that religious belief did not exempt practice from criminal law. A foundational ruling in American religious-liberty jurisprudence and the legal framework around Latter-day Saint practice.
Repository: U.S. Supreme Court · National Archives
Official Church statements and declarations.
Institutional documents from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that mark major turning points in the history of persecution and response.
September 24, 1890
Official Declaration 1 (Manifesto)
Statement by President Wilford Woodruff announcing the Church’s decision to refrain from marriages forbidden by the law of the land. Marked the formal end of plural marriage and the turning point in the anti-polygamy era.
Repository: Doctrine and Covenants · Church History Library
1835–present
Doctrine and Covenants 121–123
Portions of letters written from Liberty Jail during the Missouri expulsion, later canonized as scripture. Contain some of the most enduring theological reflection on suffering, endurance, and justice in the Latter-day Saint tradition.
Repository: Doctrine and Covenants
Various
Church History Topics
Carefully documented historical essays prepared by the Church History Department covering early opposition, Jackson County violence, the extermination order, Hawn’s Mill, the departure from Nauvoo, anti-polygamy legislation, and related subjects.
Repository: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
How to use this archive.
The archive is meant for a wide range of visitors. Journalists can verify claims. Educators can build lesson plans. Researchers can locate sources. Family historians can find documents connected to ancestors. Curious readers can encounter the story through the documents themselves rather than through secondary retelling.
For in-depth research, we encourage visitors to follow the repository links to the holding institutions. Those archives often offer additional materials, digitized images, transcriptions, and scholarly apparatus that this summary cannot reproduce. A few items we particularly recommend as starting places: the Missouri State Archives Mormon War Papers collection, the Joseph Smith Papers project, and the Church History Topics essays.
What will be added here.
This archive will grow. Over time, SAFE intends to expand the collection with higher-resolution images of key documents, full transcriptions where rights permit, searchable indexes, thematic guides for educators, and curated pathways for journalists working on specific stories.
If you are a researcher, educator, or archivist with suggestions for additions or corrections, please use the contact page. A public record becomes more useful the more carefully it is curated.
A note on responsibility.
Primary sources do not interpret themselves. Two honest readers can look at the same document and draw different conclusions about what it means. SAFE’s commitment is to present the documents accurately, describe them fairly, and point visitors to the original repositories so that they can examine the materials themselves.
This archive does not exist to prove a predetermined narrative. It exists to make the record accessible. The history speaks for itself when the documents are allowed to.
The record is here. Engage with it.
Read the documents, verify the claims, and help build the public memory this history deserves.