1. 1. Oliver Cowdery, “Letter III” to W. W. Phelps, December 1834, LDS Messenger and Advocate 1 (December 1834): 42, in Dan Vogel, ed., Early Mormon Documents, 5 vols. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996-2003), 2:424; Joseph Smith, “Manuscript History,” 2, ibid., 1:59.
2. 2. Orsamus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase, and Morris’ Reserve (Rochester, N.Y.: William Alling, 1851), 214, in Early Mormon Documents, 3:50. Since the Methodists did not acquire property on the Vienna Road until July 1821, the camp meetings were almost certainly held after that date. Wesley Walters, “A Reply to Dr. Bushman,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 4, no. 1 (Spring 1969): 99. D. Michael Quinn argues that, on the contrary, a Methodist camp meeting of 1820 can be fairly interpreted as the religious revival to which Joseph Smith refers and that Methodists typically only asked permission to use property for camp meetings rather than purchase the land. D. Michael Quinn, “Joseph Smith’s Experience of a Methodist ‘Camp Meeting’ in 1820,” Dialogue Paperless, E-Paper #3, expanded version (“definitive”), December 20, 2006, http://www.dialoguejournal.com/excerpts/e4.pdf (accessed March 6, 2007).
3. 3. Joseph and Hiel Lewis, “Mormon History: A New Chapter about to Be Published,” Amboy [Illinois] Journal, April 30, 1879, 1, in Early Mormon Documents, 4:305-6.
4. 4. Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989)
5. Richard Lyman Bushman with the assistance of Jed Woodworth, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 153, 251-52, 254.