RLP 352: Levi Richards’ Journal and Joseph Smith’s Vision

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 352. Levi Richards Journal and Joseph Smith’s vision. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

Nicole (41s):
Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (47s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (50s):
I’m doing great. I’ve been practicing with AI transcription over the weekend because I was doing a class about it and it’s neat to see all of the features that are improving there. What about you?

Diana (1m 0s):
Well, I’ve been doing a deep dive into a house history, which was really fun over the weekend and this was our Creer ancestral home that our ancestor Charles Cannon Creer built for his wife upon their marriage. And we have been to that house and I like to go by it every time I’m in Spanish Fork, Utah. But I wanted to really do some house history And it was so fun. I looked at all the, you know, the written histories. We have quite a bit of written history and did what I could, you know, with the records. So then I asked ChatGPT to do an architectural analysis based on the image that I uploaded.

Diana (1m 45s):
And it was great. It gave me so many interesting ideas about, you know, where Charles would’ve got his inspiration in designing the house. It has really neat gables and it’s got all this intricate design and I was very impressed with what ChatGPT gave me. And then ChatGPT went ahead and gave me ideas for research, what I, I really hadn’t asked for, but it gave me the idea to look at Sanborn fire insurance maps and I’ve never really been able to use those because we don’t have a lot of houses in the south that we research most of the time. But this house I was able to find a 1908 Sanborn map and I located the house on it and it was just really fun to see, you know, where it was on the block and see how they described it.

Diana (2m 35s):
You know, these maps were made for the fire department so they could see what the house was made of and I saw the house was made of brick and the roof type with shingles and it shows where you’ve got entryways. So that, that was fun, you know, it took me a while to locate those maps and to get the right address and and all of that. So I ended up spending a lot of time on it, but it was a lot of fun.

Nicole (2m 57s):
Nice. That’s really fun. I’m glad that you were able to, to do a deep dive into that and learn more about the house and I remember visiting that and it’s just a really cool place to go.

Diana (3m 5s):
It is, and I found it on Google Maps with, with a pretty nice picture and I’m just so happy that whoever owns it now is taking good care of it. It still looks great. So it was built in 1892, so it’s close to 135 years old, so I love that they built it to last, which is great.

Nicole (3m 27s):
Yeah.

Diana (3m 28s):
Well let’s do some announcements. We are looking forward to our Research Like a Pro webinar for April and this will be on a Tuesday, April 15th at 11:00 AM Mountain Time. The title is A Mighty Duo: Autosomal DNA and Indirect Evidence Reveal Harrison Johnson’s Biological Father and our presenter is Jill Nock, who is one of our fabulous FamilyLocket researchers. And this will be all about Harrison Johnson, who was born about 1813 in either Maury County or Hickman County, Tennessee. No direct evidence has been found to tie him to a father, but autosomal DNA and indirect evidence team up to break a longstanding brick wall.

Diana (4m 9s):
So our topics will be Testing a Hypothesis, Autosomal DNA, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage DNA, Migration, Diagramming, Shared cM Project, Gephi Network Graph, and Tennessee. So for anyone who has done Tennessee research, you will recognize the challenge of researching a Johnson in early Tennessee. So I’m really looking forward to this. Our next Research Like a Pro study group, will start on August 27th, 2025 and registration begins May 21st and will end on August 21st. You can join our newsletter for coupons and all the news of what we are doing and upcoming conferences.

Diana (4m 52s):
The one we are really looking forward to is the National Genealogical Society Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, which is May 23rd to May 26th. And Nicole and I will both be there presenting on research planning with AI and we’ll be doing this together. It should be a really fun weekend. So we hope to see many of you there in person. For those of you who live in that area or who are just excited to travel to Kentucky.

Nicole (5m 19s):
Yes, that will be such a fun conference. Well, today our topic is Levi Richards. And Levi is the fourth great-grand uncle of my husband and also a brother to the well-known Secretary of Joseph Smith, Jr., Willard Richards, and Willard is my husband’s direct ancestor. Well, we’re focusing on Levi Richards today because he had a really interesting journal and he was born on April 14th, 1799 to his parents, Joseph Richards and Rhoda Howe in Hopkinton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

Nicole (5m 59s):
So Levi’s mother Rhoda, she was a sister of the mother of Brigham Young, making Levi Richards and Willard Richards, the first cousins of Brigham Young. So some fun connections there. Well, Levi Richards joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on December 31st, 1836 in Kirtland, Ohio. And he served a mission to England from 1840 to 1843. He was actually a physician who sometimes attended Joseph Smith and one of his most significant contributions to church history is his journal in which he recorded one of the earliest accounts of the first vision by contemporaries of Joseph Smith.

Nicole (6m 42s):
So this topic kind of goes along with some of the other topics we’ve covered this year for history about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, where many of our ancestors were involved in this early church history. So it’s been really interesting to see what sources they created or were uploaded at FamilySearch as a memory from our family that can help us learn more about early church history and also using early church history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to shed light on the lives of our ancestors. So kind of the back and forth where the sources that they created can give us information as well as the sources about the church can give us information about our ancestors’ lives.

Nicole (7m 23s):
So today we kind of have the interesting opportunity to look into Levi Richards journal and see what he wrote there.

Diana (7m 34s):
I love that and I love that we have journals to use contemporary journals, you know, people that were living at the time and just recorded it from their own lens into something that for us seems so long ago, but for them they were living this history. And I am really impressed with the new Joseph Smith Papers project because with that, which is accessible online, anyone can go look at it, you can see all of the sources and you know, as Genealogists we are really concerned with sources. If we read that something happened, we want to see how we know that. So these Joseph Smith papers, this project has gathered nine accounts of Joseph Smith’s 1820 Vision.

Diana (8m 20s):
Four were recorded by him or his scribes, and then five early accounts were written by his contemporaries who heard him speak about the vision. So in chronological order in 1832 we have the Joseph Smith history account, which is written in Joseph’s handwriting. Then in 1835 we have the Joseph Smith Journal written in Warren Parish’s handwriting. 1838 we have the Joseph Smith history account, which was copied by various scribes into a bound volume and later canonized. And then in 1840 we have Orson Pratt’s pamphlet published in Scotland. In 1842 we have Joseph Smith’s Wentworth letter, which was printed in Times and Seasons.

Diana (9m 4s):
In 1842 we also have Orson Hyde’s Ein Ruf aus der Wüste, which translated is “a cry out of the wilderness” published in Germany, and 1843 Levi Richards Journal where Levi recorded a discourse given by Joseph Smith. In 1843, an interview of Joseph Smith by David Nye White, published in the Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette. And finally in 1844, the Alexander Neibaur Journal and he visited with Joseph and recorded with Joseph, shared with him.

Nicole (9m 33s):
Yeah, there were a lot of accounts and it’s interesting to see how varied they were. You know, some are journals, some are published pamphlets or books and then others are like newspaper interviews. So it’s really cool to see that. Well, when I was kind of looking at this, I noticed Levi Richards and thought, oh that must be a relative of my husband because of the Richard’s surname. And sure enough he’s like I said, the fourth great-granduncle. So Levi Richards’ journal is part of the Church History Library’s collection called Levi Richards papers 1837 to 1867 manuscript collection 1,284. And the collection includes digitized images of Levi’s diaries and papers and is only one of several collections with manuscripts relating to Levi and his family.

Nicole (10m 22s):
The Joseph Smith Papers website also includes portions of Levi’s journal as they relate to Joseph Smith, along with a highly accurate transcription. Next to the journal images, this webpage allows you to check and uncheck a box for hiding the editing marks to enable you to see the line break symbols and angle brackets used for insertions. So I thought that was really neat while the journal was preserved by Levi Richards family and donated to the Church History Library sometime between 1891 and 1941 when Andrew Jensen was working in the church historian’s office now called the Church History Library. And as a historical document, Levi Richards Journal offers a firsthand perspective on the events and teachings of the early church And it is an original source.

Nicole (11m 7s):
One thing about this original source that’s great is that it was created at the time of the events, so it was a daily diary type of thing, not like some journals have autobiographies or histories of a person’s life where they write it years later after the events and then they continue with daily journal keeping later on. This one was actually a diary kept in the 1840s. So what’s cool is that he used very small little journal volumes and the Church History Library includes 30 of these small little journals. So they’re volumed in volume numbers and they go up to 1848. And volume 18 includes the entry on June 11th, 1843 with the recounting of Joseph Smith’s first vision and the source note at the Joseph Smith papers for this journal volume number 18 has the following description, “a small book measuring six and a quarter by four inches or 16 by 10 centimeters with eight leaves.

Nicole (12m 12s):
All 16 pages are inscribed in brown ink with redactions in graphite.” So he was using brown ink and sounds like a pencil. This is a much smaller book than most of us would think for of as a journal. I would think of it more as like a pocket notebook with pages the size of a postcard or a recipe card.

Diana (12m 31s):
That’s so interesting and you must have written pretty small. I’m looking at the image you put on the blog post. It’s got really nice handwriting. It’s fun to actually think about someone writing all this out. And I love that the website gives you the transcription right next to the writing. I mean that’s a huge boon, isn’t it, to have that transcription available to read and then be able to compare back and forth.

Nicole (12m 54s):
Yeah, it’s amazing how helpful it is to have a transcription that is more legible to our eye. We can read it so much faster, we don’t have to puzzle over figuring out words that are not as legible to us. So it’s really nice. Now let’s have a word from our Sponsor. Have you ever wished you could step back in time and see the world your ancestors lived in? With Newspapers.com you can. It’s like having a time machine right at your fingertips. With a simple search you can explore more than a billion pages of historical newspapers dating from 1690 to 2025 from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and beyond. Uncover the details that bring your family story to life in birth notices, wedding announcements and obituaries. But it’s not just about facts, it’s about experiencing the moments they lived through.

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Diana (14m 1s):
Well let’s take a look at one of these actual entries and this one is June 11th, 1843. And in this entry, Levi Richards recorded some of the topics discussed at a meeting held that day at the Nauvoo Temple and the journal entry reads, “attended meeting at the temple, weather very fine, moderately warm, heard J Smith preach from Matthew, Oh Jerusalem, jerusalem. How oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathered of her chickens under her wings and you would not, behold your house is left unto you desolate. End quote. And then, “afternoon heard Elder D Wolf, Episcopalian clergyman from the sixth Hebrews,”

Diana (14m 43s):
and then he quotes, “therefore leaving the first principles” and and then it’s abbreviated “at 6:00 AM heard Elder George J. Adams upon the Book of Mormon proved from the 24th, 28th and 29th of Isaiah that the everlasting covenant, which was set upon by Christ and the apostles had been broken.” “President J Smith bore testimony to the same saying that when he was a youth, he began to think about these things but could not find out which of all the sects were right. He went into the grove and inquired of the Lord, which of all the sects were right. He received for answer that none of them were right, that they were all wrong and that the everlasting covenant was broken. He said he understood the fullness of the gospel from beginning to end and could teach it.

Diana (15m 25s):
And also the order of the priesthood in all its ramifications, earth and Hell had opposed him and tried to destroy him, but they had not done it and they never would.” That’s the end of the entry. And historians say this is the only diary reference to the only known public address in which the prophet bore testimony of his first vision, the journal entry follows Levi’s cousins of writing the date with a semicircle around it, telling what he did and mentioning the weather. Oh my goodness, that is so interesting. And I love that he mentioned the weather because I keep a daily journal and I also mention the weather. I think it’s so funny, I’m like, oh it’s finally nice or it snowed yesterday, you know, so interesting.

Diana (16m 9s):
Why is it that we like to talk about the weather? It must be very important in our lives. But I love that, that wow, he just took good notes about that meeting with all the different quotes from the scriptures and all the different topics. So I’m impressed with his record keeping in that journal. That’s awesome.

Nicole (16m 29s):
Yeah, and it’s funny to see that he spelled covenant wrong every time that it, he wrote it and, and it’s interesting to see that he wrote down the weather, you know? And I think it’s just part of, if you’re doing a daily journal that’s something very different every day. So makes sense that you would put that away.

Diana (16m 49s):
Yeah.

Nicole (16m 50s):
Well, comparing Levi Richards’ entry on June 11th, 1843 with other sources recording the events of the day, kind of shows us a fuller account of the meeting. And Joseph Smith’s journal kept by his secretary Willard, reported that Joseph smoke at the stand referring to a temporary structure that was built at various times on the east, west and south walls of the unfinished Nauvoo Temple and the June 14th issue of John Taylor’s Nauvoo Neighbor newspaper reported business seems to be progressing in our city. Buildings are being raised in every direction and all of the citizens manifest a determination that Nauvoo shall ever be built.

Nicole (17m 32s):
The temple is improving fast, the stones of that building begin to rise, tier above tier And it already begins to present a stately and noble appearance the day being unusually fine. Last Sabbath, we had a large concourse of people assembled at the temple. The floor as well as the walls were literally covered with people. Mr. Joseph Smith delivered a discourse in the morning, which was listened to with great interest by the congregation. The Reverend, Mr. McWalden, an Episcopal minister who has been the way seems to be much of a gentleman, delivered an address in the afternoon and so forth. And so this is interesting because this newspaper account printed in John Taylor’s newspaper matches up with Joseph’s journal and the manuscript history of the church.

Nicole (18m 12s):
So 10:00 AM meeting at the stand, a large assembly of the Saints met the temple stand hymn by the choir Prayer by Elder P Pratt and singing. So it’s interesting to kind of compare these accounts with what Levi’s Journal said to kind of get alternate accounts of that day.

Diana (18m 33s):
Absolutely. Well what is the significance of this account? So although Levi’s journal entry for Sunday June 11th, 1843 follows the series of events he curiously noted at the time of 6:00 AM when Elder George J. Adams began speaking, which probably was a mistake since Willard Richards recorded in Joseph Smith’s journal that Elder Adams was to lecture on the Book of Mormon at five and a half pm Levi’s entries commonly included am to mark his actions in the morning and then PM to share what happened in the afternoon on another entry transcribed above on June 7th, Levi used am twice, probably erroneously writing AM when he meant PM and Richards didn’t include anything about the evening discourses on June 11th in Joseph’s journal after writing the Elder Adams was asked to speak at 5:30 PM perhaps Willard wasn’t feeling well and asked his brother Levi to take notes at the evening meeting.

Diana (19m 34s):
So this really points to the fact that we are human and we make mistakes and that’s why it’s nice to have multiple sources to correlate and decide what might be the truth, what might have really happened here. And we have to do that all the time in our records when we have conflicts like this.

Nicole (19m 52s):
Yeah, it’s interesting when you have a conflict, you know, we can just look at the conflict and be like, that doesn’t make sense. Or we can go look at other contemporary records, like I said, with the newspaper and the church’s manuscript history and just try to see what we could piece together. And so looking at the patterns in Levi’s journal was really helpful to see that he usually would start with like AM and then describe what happened in the am and then he would go on to the PM for the second half of the entry. And so this entry follows that, but he just erroneously put AM when he meant pm.

Diana (20m 27s):
Yeah. And that’s such a good research point to look at other entries in whatever it is you’re using, whether it’s a journal or a collection of records. And that can really help you understand the one, because we can’t just take one record out of context and try to analyze it. You’ve gotta look at all the others around it to understand what was really happening with the record keeping

Nicole (20m 49s):
So true. Well, let’s talk about Levi’s later life to wrap this up. Not too long after the meeting at the Temple Stand on June 11th, 1843, Levi Richards married to Sarah Griffith on December 25th on Christmas Day, 1843, who he met on his mission to England. And Levi was 44 years old when he got married and Sarah was 40. They actually were able to have one child even though Sarah was already 40, and his name was Levi Willard Richards, which was fun combining his father’s and his uncle’s name. He was born June 12th, 1845 in Nauvoo when Sarah was 42 years old.

Nicole (21m 30s):
I thought that was amazing. Well, in 1848, Levi and Sarah were called on a five-year mission together to the British Isles without their young son. So he would’ve been about three years old. Leaving their young son who at that time had frail health. Must have been such a challenge. But Levi’s cousin, Brigham Young stated that if he would send his son to the Rocky Mountains, he should live long and be favored of the Lord. So when they went on their mission to England, they sent their three-year-old son to the Rocky Mountains, which would become Utah.

Nicole (22m 11s):
And this was like a pioneer journey that they all took across the plains. And so he went with Levi’s older, unmarried sister Rhoda. So Rhoda took charge of Levi’s son and they traveled together in the Willard Richards wagon company that same year. And in 1851 I found Levi and his wife Sarah on the census in Wales. So they were in Swanee, Glamorganshire. And Levi was listed as a minister of the Everlasting Gospel. That was his occupation. After the mission was over, Levi and Sarah were reunited with their son who lived onto adulthood.

Nicole (22m 52s):
And so he survived even though he was in frail health as a child. And then Levi died in 1876 and is buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. So it was fun to learn more about Levi Richards in writing this post and to dive into his journal and understanding that, and then also to see kind of some of the things that happened in his life after his famous journal entry. So it was interesting, it was fun to do this research.

Diana (23m 21s):
I love it. And you know, these little deep dives into something very specific about an ancestor really enables us to not only dive into their life, but gives it such a focus. So you don’t have to feel like you’re writing a huge history, you’re just writing this one little bit. And I love that. I think that makes it so much more doable. And this was such an interesting topic. I cannot even imagine leaving your child who is, I think about three when they left based on the information there, and knowing that he is gonna be crossing the plains, you know, going to this unknown location. Oh my goodness, these people had so much faith and determination and they were strong people.

Diana (24m 5s):
So that’s really kind of an incredible story. So thanks for sharing that. So fun. Well, thanks for writing this and sharing this so we could discuss it. I think journals are fascinating to correlate with events from other sources. And thanks everyone for listening. We hope that you enjoyed this episode and we hope this will give you some motivation to go and research one of your ancestors and learn more about a little bit of their life. So thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you next time.

Nicole (24m 38s):
Bye-bye.

Diana (24m 39s):
Bye-Bye bye.

Nicole (25m 19s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.