Timeline
The story in date order. Each event links to the episode that covers it.
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December 23, 1805
Joseph Smith Jr. is born in Sharon, Vermont
The fifth of eleven children of Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith. The family moves repeatedly before settling near Palmyra, New York, around 1816.
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c. 1820
The First Vision
Smith later describes a vision in the woods near his family's farm. The earliest written account dates from 1832, and the accounts differ in important ways.
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1822 to 1827
Treasure digging and the seer stone
Smith works as a scryer for treasure-seeking companies in New York and Pennsylvania. He is tried in Bainbridge in 1826 as a "glass looker."
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September 22, 1827
Smith reports obtaining the golden plates
With his new wife Emma Hale, Smith goes to the hill near Manchester and returns with what he says are ancient plates.
4 Did Joseph Smith Use the Golden Plates to Translate The Book of Mormon?
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June 1828
The lost 116 pages
Martin Harris takes the first manuscript pages to show his wife Lucy; they disappear. Translation stops for months.
3 Martin & Lucy Harris and the Lost 116 Pages of the Book of Mormon
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April to June 1829
The Book of Mormon is dictated
With Oliver Cowdery as scribe, Smith dictates most of the text in about three months, largely with his face in a hat containing the seer stone.
4 Did Joseph Smith Use the Golden Plates to Translate The Book of Mormon?
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June 1829
The Three and Eight Witnesses
Eleven men sign statements that they saw or handled the plates. What "seeing" meant to them is one of the series' central questions.
5 Did the Book of Mormon Witnesses Really See Golden Plates?
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March 26, 1830
The Book of Mormon is published
E. B. Grandin prints 5,000 copies in Palmyra. Eleven days later the Church of Christ is organized in Fayette, New York.
6 Book of Mormon: Historical or 19th Century Text?7 Joseph Smith’s Early Opposition & Forgotten Critics
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Winter 1830 to 1831
The move to Kirtland, Ohio
A revelation commands the Saints to gather in Ohio, where Sidney Rigdon's converts have swelled the church. Missionaries continue west to Missouri.
8 Joseph Smith Prepares Church for Second Coming of Jesus9 Miracles, Demons & the United Order in Joseph Smith’s Kirtland10 Early Mormon Missionary Polygamy with Native Americans?
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February 16, 1832
“The Vision” of three degrees of glory
Smith and Rigdon report a joint vision of the afterlife, later canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 76. Many members find it hard to accept.
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January 1833
The School of the Prophets
Smith gathers the leading men for instruction in Kirtland, including washing of feet and ecstatic experiences.
12 Did Joseph Smith Speak in Tongues13 Joseph Smith’s School of the Prophets
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July to November 1833
Mormons are driven from Jackson County, Missouri
Mobs destroy the church press in Independence and expel the Saints across the Missouri River.
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May to July 1834
Zion's Camp
Smith leads about 200 armed men to Missouri to restore the Saints to their lands. The expedition ends in cholera and disbandment without a fight.
15 Joseph Smith and Zion’s Camp – Disastrous or Inspirational?
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July 1835
The Egyptian papyri arrive in Kirtland
The church buys mummies and papyri from Michael Chandler. Smith begins the "translation" that becomes the Book of Abraham.
17 Origins of the Book of Abraham28 Book of Abraham & “God Making” in Nauvoo
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c. 1835 to 1836
Fanny Alger
Smith's relationship with the teenage Alger, a household helper, is later described as his first plural marriage. Oliver Cowdery called it "a dirty, nasty, filthy affair."
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March 27, 1836
The Kirtland Temple is dedicated
A week of visions, tongues and reported angelic visitations that participants compared to Pentecost.
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January to November 1837
The Kirtland Safety Society collapses
The church's unchartered bank fails within months of opening. Lawsuits and dissent follow, and Smith flees Kirtland in January 1838.
21 The Kirtland Bank Scandal & Joseph Smith18 Family Feud & Scandal in Early Mormonism
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June to October 1838
The Danites and the Missouri war
A secret paramilitary band forms at Far West. Skirmishes with Missourians escalate through the summer and fall.
22 The Danites: Joseph Smith’s Paramilitary Group23 Extermination Orders in Mormon Missouri
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October 27, 1838
Governor Boggs issues the Extermination Order
Three days later a militia kills seventeen Mormons at Haun's Mill. Smith surrenders at Far West on October 31.
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December 1838 to April 1839
Liberty Jail
Smith and companions spend the winter in a Missouri dungeon, then escape during a change of venue and rejoin the Saints in Illinois.
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1839 to 1840
Nauvoo is founded
The Saints drain the swamps at Commerce, Illinois, rename it Nauvoo, and win a city charter with sweeping powers. Baptism for the dead is introduced in 1840.
25 Joseph Smith and the Keys of the Universe26 Baptisms for the Dead, Re-Baptism, and John C. Bennett
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April 5, 1841
Smith marries Louisa Beaman
The first well-documented plural marriage in Nauvoo. Roughly thirty more follow over the next three years.
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March to May 1842
Masonry, the Relief Society, and the endowment
Smith becomes a Freemason on March 15, organizes the Relief Society on March 17, publishes the Book of Abraham, and introduces the endowment ceremony on May 4.
28 Book of Abraham & “God Making” in Nauvoo29 Freemasonry & The Early Nauvoo Endowment Ceremony30 Relief Society Secret Polygamy & Joseph Smith’s Character
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May to July 1842
The Boggs shooting and the Bennett exposé
Former governor Lilburn Boggs is shot; John C. Bennett breaks with Smith and publishes lurid accusations. Smith goes into hiding to avoid extradition.
31 Joseph Smith’s World on Fire32 Responding to Joseph Smith Polygamy Deniers33 How Joseph Smith Smeared Honest Critics
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1843
Plural marriage expands
Smith marries at least a dozen women in 1843, including Helen Mar Kimball, age fourteen, and several women already married to other men.
34 Joseph Smith Pursues Teenage Girls in Nauvoo35 Sham Marriages in Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo
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July 12, 1843
The polygamy revelation is written down
Hyrum Smith reads what becomes Doctrine and Covenants 132 to Emma, who rejects it. The marriage enters its most bitter period.
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September 28, 1843
The second anointing
Joseph and Emma are the first to receive the ordinance that promised exaltation, extended to a small circle of the Anointed Quorum.
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January to April 1844
William Law breaks with Smith
Smith's counselor in the First Presidency rejects polygamy and is excommunicated on April 18. He founds a reform church and a newspaper.
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April 11, 1844
The Council of Fifty anoints Smith king
Weeks after launching his campaign for President of the United States, Smith is ordained "King, Priest and Ruler over Israel on the Earth."
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June 7 to 10, 1844
The Nauvoo Expositor
Law's newspaper publishes one issue exposing polygamy and theocracy. Smith, as mayor, orders the press destroyed.
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June 27, 1844
Joseph and Hyrum Smith are killed at Carthage Jail
A mob with blackened faces storms the jail where the brothers await trial for riot and treason.
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August 8, 1844
The succession crisis
Nauvoo's Saints back the Twelve under Brigham Young over Sidney Rigdon. Emma Smith stays behind when the church goes west.