Orson Pratt · · 1859-01-02
Published in Journal of Discourses, Volume 7, pp. 22-38, printed as 'A Discourse by Elder Orson Pratt, delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, January 2, 1859,' reported by G. D. Watt. Not General Conference (no GC window covers January 1859; see indexes/conference-calendar.md). A long scholarly discourse citing many historical/bibliographic sources (Marsh's Michaelis, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Bishop Watson, Mumford, etc.); all citations, dates, and figures transcribed as printed, including the print's own internal inconsistency in the spelling of the bibliographer 'Cassimer Odin' / 'Cassimer Oudin' / 'Cassimir Oudin' across pp. 27 and 30 (preserved verbatim rather than silently normalized). Pitman shorthand report; speaker did not review this text before publication.
Item-level BYU ContentDM link for the first page (p. 22).
Carruth CR 100 912 inventory item cr-100-912-0651. Scholarly re-transcription of George D. Watt's original Pitman shorthand report, catalogued at the Church History Library. Papers of George D. Watt MS 4534 box 3 disk 2 1859b images 276-284. Sermon in Journal of Discourses 7:22; sermon not in CR 100 317. Transcribed by LaJean Purcell Carruth 5 December 2008; corrected 20 November 2012. Carruth's footnotes map where the printed text goes beyond the shorthand, noting a long detailed Mumford quotation inserted at JD 7:25-26 and considerable added manuscript detail through JD 7:27, and several proper names in this transcription are supplied from JD 7:23-7:40 where the shorthand vowels are ambiguous; she also records that this sermon led some Saints to think Orson Pratt was disproving the Bible, which John Taylor answered from the same pulpit on 29 January 1859. Recorded as a separate witness per docs/ingestion.md's Carruth policy; the printed Journal of Discourses 7:22 text stays preferred until this transcription is reviewed against it.
Ingested; not yet independently reviewed.
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.