Minutes of the January 1831 Conference

Source note

Preferred witness: Minute Book 2, page 2, accessed 21 May 2026. The clerk explicitly states that no conference minutes were taken apart from the referenced commandment. ¶

The transcripts below follow the Joseph Smith Papers expanded-transcription presentation: original spelling and punctuation are retained; editorial additions appear in brackets; insertions appear in angle brackets; cancellations appear with strikethrough; and manuscript page endings are linked to the corresponding JSP image and transcript page. ¶

Historical introduction

The conference convened at Fayette on 1 January 1831 pursuant to the September adjournment. Its surviving record consists only of a notice that a commandment was received; the referenced text is now Doctrine and Covenants 38. ¶

This material remains one conference record because the surviving sources preserve proceedings, retrospective summaries, or reported remarks rather than a set of discrete, complete sermon transcripts. ¶

Transcript

Minute Book 2

1 January 1831 • Saturday

Conference convened according to adjournment but there were no minutes taken, save a commandment received, giving directions to the Saints, see Book of Commandments. Page 80. 80 p. 2 ¶

Compiler's notes

Tyler’s collection-level compiler’s note is preserved verbatim. ¶

Notes from Tyler’s compilation

The section that Oliver Cowdery refers to here is what is now D&C Section 38. ¶

Vault presentation

• No sermon text survives, so the record remains explicitly fragmentary.