Conference record · 1861 October General Conference · 1861-10-06
Deseret News minutes (October 23, 1861, pp. 185-186) of the Semi-Annual Conference, October 6-8, 1861. Includes the dedicatory prayer for the repaired and enlarged Tabernacle, delivered by Brigham Young on the evening of October 6, 1861. Heber C. Kimball's 'Building of the Temple' discourse and George A. Smith's 'Importance of the Mission to the Cotton Country' are filed separately as full talks. Most other remarks (Taylor, Hyde, Wells, Woolley, Phineas H. Young, Samuel W. Richards, George D. Watt, Carrington, Benson, Coombs, Morley, Phelps, Miles, Snow, Pratt) are brief and summarized here rather than transcribed in full, as the source preserves only third-person summaries for them, not verbatim text. Coverage now extends through the full three-day conference (Sunday Oct. 6 through Tuesday Oct. 8 close), not only the first two days.
Official published minutes of the conference.
Digital transcript of the Deseret News minutes.
Proofread against the source text.
Proofread against the official/CHL/JSP source plus scan/OCR witness; extended the minutes summary to cover the previously-missing Tuesday, October 8 session (had stopped after Monday, October 7). Confirmed no stale references to the deleted duplicate Kimball file.
Collated word-by-word against the original scan.
Heavyweight pass: cross-checked historicalgeneralconferences.weebly.com raw HTML (fetched directly, not summarized) against this file line by line. Confirmed the dedicatory prayer text is complete and verbatim. Found and fixed a genuine content gap: the minutes summary previously ended after the Monday, October 7 business session and omitted the entire Tuesday, October 8 session (Phelps, Miles, Brigham Young on marriage, rag/paper-mill remarks, Lorenzo Snow, Orson Pratt, Kimball's Zion's Camp reminiscence, and the closing benediction/adjournment to April), plus several Monday-afternoon items (Carrington, Benson, Coombs, Morley, Bonelli, evening Bishops' meeting); added summarized coverage of all of it in third person, consistent with the source (which preserves only third-person summaries for these speakers, not verbatim text) and the file's existing style — no invented text. Confirmed both separately-filed discourses (Kimball's 'Building of the Temple—Necessity of Union' and George A. Smith's 'Importance of the Mission to the Cotton Country') are correctly cross-referenced as filed separately, with no stale 'not yet transcribed' language, and that the file does not reference the deleted duplicate Kimball file (id 1861-10-kimball-building-of-the-templenecessity-of-union) anywhere. Fidelity remains fragmentary (most speakers other than Kimball/Smith/Young's prayer are third-person summaries only, per the source itself, not full transcripts).
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.