Conference record · 1845 April General Conference · 1845-04-06
Preferred witness is the Church History Library manuscript minutes for the full April 6-8, 1845 Nauvoo conference: five written images plus a cover image, transcribed in full directly from the catalog originals on 2026-07-18. Thomas Bullock's separate booklet is a more detailed parallel summary witness for April 6 only; its complete conference section (catalog items 23-30) was also transcribed directly from the originals. The record remains fragmentary because both witnesses summarize most discourses rather than preserving them verbatim. The catalog asset URLs had previously been assigned to the wrong witnesses and were corrected during this pass.
Full-conference manuscript set recorded by Thomas Bullock: five written images and one cover image. The complete written portion is transcribed below and covers April 6 summaries, April 7 morning and afternoon business, and April 8 summaries.
Catalog items 23-30 contain Bullock's April 6 conference notes and are transcribed below directly from the original images. Catalog item 31 begins the April 20 meeting, which is outside this conference record.
Proofread against the source text.
Light review: in-context proofread of both witness transcriptions; no OCR typos, doubled spaces, or layout artifacts found. Bracketed uncertain readings preserved as the original transcriber's convention, not touched. NOT a full page-by-page scan collation.
Collated word-by-word against the original scan.
Heavyweight pass: fetched all catalog page images directly via the CHL delivery API (bypassing the deep-zoom viewer) and collated both witnesses word-for-word against the scans. Nauvoo manuscript minutes (5 images): fully accurate, no corrections needed -- every insertion, cancellation, and marginal correction in the fair-copy hand was already faithfully reflected. Bullock booklet (8 images, harder informal shorthand): found and fixed several real misreadings -- the children-blessed list (previously invented 'Burbry'/'Orvin' surnames not supported by the scan) corrected to the actual Emery/Godfrey/Perrin/Savage-Sawyer/Carles/Fuller/Morse names and guardian/parent structure across its two-page table; 'D. Goforth' restored to the P.M. attendee list; several individual misreadings fixed ('bring' not 'array' against Nauvoo; 'look so cheerful' not 'bold or fearless'; 'the scripture' not 'the Priesthood' introduced to Sidney Rigdon; the 'Jehovah drew ten times more the divinity and proof of Joseph Smith' sentence, previously a fabricated paraphrase; 'fallen prophet' not 'false prophet'; the 'in the City of Joseph'/'keys of the mansion'/'lead this people' clauses, previously misread as 'as well as any of Joseph's day'/'kingdom'/'teach'). One phrase left honestly bracketed as still-uncertain shorthand rather than guessed. Metadata (source URLs, witness labels, item ranges, fidelity) confirmed accurate against the catalog.
This is a living critical edition. If you find a transcription, metadata, or sourcing error in this talk, report it to the editors →Reports are collated against the page scan and land as corrections in the vault.