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OLIVER COWDREY
Total Articles:
3
Oliver Cowdrey was one of the three primary witnesses for the Book of Mormon and assisted Joseph Smith in writing the Book of Mormon. Oliver Cowdrey was also the Third cousin of Joseph Smith.
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| | The Lord Acknowledges Oliver's Divineing Abilities
Article Archived: Thursday, Oct 27, 2005, at 10:50 AM
Stored Under Topic: OLIVER COWDREY
Outside Link To Article: RIGHT CLICK - COPY LINK LOCATION
Original Author Of Article: Anonymous |  | |
In the original Book of Commandments of 1833 we find this revelation given through Joseph Smith to Oliver Cowdery:
" you shall receive a knowledge of whatsoever things you ask in faith, with an honest heart...Remember this is your gift. Now this is not all, for you have another gift which is the gift of working with the rod: behold it has told you many things:behold there is no other power save God, that can cause this rod of nature, to work in your hands, for it is the work of God;and therefore whatsoever you shall ask me to tell you by that means, that will I grant unto you, that you shall know."
In the subsequent version called The Doctrine and Covenants published in 1835 the Lord seems to have wanted a different rendition. It is as follows:
" Now this is not all your gift, for you have another gift, which is the gift of Aaron: behold it has told you many things; behold there is no other power save the power of God that can cause the gift of Aaron to be with you; therefore doubt not, for it is the gift of God, and you shall hold it in your hands, and do marvelous works; and no power shall be able to take it away out of your hands ,for it is the work of God"
The rod reffered to above is a divining rod used to find buried treasure.
When people talk about mormon culture being rich etc. I blanch a bit. This just seems like silly treasure hunting turned religion to me. I think JS and Oliver were, as Van Wagoner calls them " Pious Frauds" .
Now for a little fun. Here is something that a treasure digger should never have to ask:
Where is my rod? I mean, if you have the gift of Aaron why do you need to ask. Just feel for it.
| In the Church News there were three articles dealing with Oliver Cowdery. In part these articles said:
Oliver was the chief beneficiary of one of Joseph Smiths most peculiar qualities; his generosity in sharing his vision.
Based on the letters from Oliver Cowdery to Joseph Smith, Oliver is frustrated and angry; he feels oppressed. While this is often the case with those that leave the Church, it turns out not to be the Churchs fault, in most cases, but the individuals attitude that is in conflict.
They do admit however Lack of sophistication [on the part of Church Leadership] made Oliver personally liable for what was really a debt of the Church incurred for the purpose of the Church.
So what did happen?
In 1836 the Kirkland Safety Society Bank was formed. Orson Hyde was sent to the legislature to try to secure a charter and Oliver Cowdery was sent to secure printing plates for the bank. The charter was denied, so the bank reorganized as an anti-bank or quasi banking organization in 1837. Joseph Smith used boxes full of rocks with a layer of coins on top to show the bank assets in order to get people to deposit money. In reality most of the assets of the Mormon Church and the members was in land.
At that time there was a great deal of land speculation in Ohio, Michigan and Missouri. This drove the land prices from around $7.00 per acre to around $44.00 per acre. Joseph Smith used the money that the bank did have to speculate further. By 1839 the price of land fell to the $17.00-$18.00 per acre. The bank and the Church had invested $60,000 in land and no longer had funds to cover its obligations. Oliver Cowdery was the Vice President of the anti-bank and signed most of the bank notes. Joseph Smith made himself cashier rather than an officer.
At the same time, Joseph Smith started down the road to polygamy. Oliver did not support polygamy.
Late in 1837 Joseph Smith wrote the following in the newspaper:
I am disposed to say a word relative to the bills of the Kirtland Safety Society Bank. I hereby warn them to beware of speculators, renegades and gamblers, who are duping the unsuspecting and the unwary, by palming upon them, those bills, which are of no worth, here. I discountenance and disapprove of any and all such practices. I know them to be detrimental to the best interests of society, as well as to the principles of religion
Joseph Smith also gave the following testimony:
He claimed that a nonmember of the Church by the name of Sapham had told him in Kirtland that a warrant had been issued against Oliver "for being engaged in making a purchase of bogus money and dies to make the counterfeit money with." According to the Prophet, he and Sidney Rigdon went to visit Oliver concerning the matter and told him that if he were guilty, he had better leave town; but if he was innocent, he should stand trial and thus be acquitted. "That night or next," the Prophet said, Oliver "left the country" (A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri From 1836 to 1839, p.146).
Sidney Rigdon testified:
After Oliver Cowdery had been taken by a State warrant for stealing, and the stolen property found ... in which nefarious transaction John Whitmer had also participated. Oliver Cowdery stole the property, conveyed it to John Whitmer ... Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Lyman E. Johnson, united with a gang of counterfeiters, thieves, liars, and blacklegs of the deepest dye, to deceive, cheat, and defraud the saints out of their property....
During the full career of Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer's bogus money business, it got abroad into the world that they were engaged in it.... We have evidence of a very strong character that you are at this very time engaged with a gang of counterfeiters, coiners, and blacklegs,... we will put you from the county of Caldwell: so help us God. Sidney Rigdon,1838 quotation published in: US Senate Document 189
Oliver Cowdery purchased the plates and signed most of the notes from the Kirkland anti-bank when there was no acceptable collateral to back up the notes. This was considered to be counterfeiting. Joseph Smith directed him to sign notes, then accused him of counterfeiting when there was a break.
In the excommunication hearing point 8 was his involvement in bogus business as described in a common report. The common report was the newspaper article written by Joseph Smith Jr. The testimony against Oliver Cowdrey on the subject was provided by Joseph Smith and circumstantial evidence.
Another point in the excommunication was that Oliver had sold a piece of his own land without the approval of Joseph Smith.
Apparently there was an additional problems between Joseph Smith and Oliver. In his reply to the Church concerning his excommunication, he complained about the theocratic rule that Joseph Smith had instituted. Oliver Cowdery responded to the excommunication in part by saying:
The very principle of which I conceive to be couched in an attempt to set up a kind of petty government, controlled and dictated by ecclesiastical influence, in the midst of this national and state government. You will, no doubt, say this is not correct; but the bare notice of these charges, over which you assume the right to decide, is, in my opinion, a direct attempt to make the secular power subservient to Church direction - to the correctness of which I cannot in conscience subscribe - I believe the principle never did fail to produce anarchy and confusion.
This attempt to control me in my temporal interests, I conceive to be a disposition to take from me a portion of my Constitutional privileges and inherent right - I only, respectfully, ask leave, therefore, to withdraw from a society assuming they have such right.
Here is a summary of charges against Oliver Cowdery and his response to the Mormon Church.
http://lds-mormon.com/oliver.shtml
Here is a complete transcript of the excommunication proceedings and responses to his letter:
http://www.saintswithouthalos.com/m/3...
On January 12, 1838, faced with a warrant for his arrest on a charge of illegal banking, Smith and Rigdon fled to Clay County, Missouri just ahead of an armed group out to capture and hold him for trial.
| | | Oliver Cowdery Teaching In Manchester - As Early As 1826?
Article Archived: Thursday, Feb 1, 2007, at 08:46 AM
Stored Under Topic: OLIVER COWDREY
Outside Link To Article: RIGHT CLICK - COPY LINK LOCATION
Original Author Of Article: JeffH | | |
That's what the authors of "Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?" (Cowdery, Davis, Vanick, 2005) argued between pages 288 and 293, but I have my doubts and want to get feedback from anyone who might be more convinced by their argument.
The authors begin with a statement by Lorenzo Saunders:
http://www.solomonspalding.com/docs2/...
The quoted portion of the statement is this:
"I received your note ready at hand and will try (to) answer the best I can and give all the information I can as respecting Mormonism and the first origin. As respecting Oliver Cowdery, he came from Kirtland in the summer of 1826 and was about there until fall and took a school in the district where the Smiths lived and the next summer he was missing and I didn't see him until fall and he came back and took our school in the district where we lived and taught about a week and went to the schoolboard and wanted the board to let him off and they did and he went to Smith and went to writing the Book of Mormon and wrote all winter. The Mormons say it [want] wrote there but I say it was because I was there."
The WRWBM authors identify the two schools spoken of by Saunders: 1) the Stafford School ("in the district where the Smiths lived", Ontario Co. District #11, school on Stafford Rd. ~1.3 miles south of the Smith home) and 2) the Armington School ("the district where we [Saunders] lived", Ontario Co. District #10, school on Canandaigua Rd. ~1 mile east of the Smith home).
There are other important implications if all Saunders says is true, but I want to focus on the part about Oliver's teaching activities.
The generally believed chronology among scholars is that Oliver taught school in Manchester during the 1828-29 term (the exact school not specified), and spent much or all of that time boarding with the Smiths, prior to traveling to Harmony PA to write for Joseph in April 1829. Nothing is typically said about Oliver's exact activities prior to that, so Saunders's statement is very important if it can be verified. Saunders places Oliver at two different schools in different terms (albeit the second one being only a brief stint), and his chronology puts Oliver teaching in the Smith's district in 1826-27, two years before the 1828-29 term.
From this, the WRWBM authors propose a new chronology that puts Oliver at the Stafford School in for the 1826-27 term, the Armington school briefly at the start of the 1827-28 term before going to work on the BoM, and then back to the Armington School for the 1828-29 term.
The authors present supporting statements from people who attended the Stafford school with the Smith children that pretty solidly establish that Oliver taught at the Stafford School. Some don't mention for how long, but Saunders's statement mentions just one term and Christopher Stafford specifically said that it was one winter.
A statement of John Stafford supports the Saunders claim that Oliver had taught at the Armington school, but neither of these two statements gives enough information to determine how long. Saunders's 1885 statement talks just about the brief start to the one term, but there's not specific mention that he returned to teach another term. The WRWBM authors claim that Oliver taught the 1828-29 term at the Armington school, but there's no direct evidence I see to confirm that it wasn't the Stafford School - I think they are forced to say it was the Armington school because they already used up their "one year" at the Stafford school (1826-27) in their proposed chronology.
I'm not convinced of the authors' chronology, primarily because all the statements can be reconciled if we suppose just one specific error in Saunders's statement. Suppose Oliver really arrived to live and teach in Manchester in 1828, and that the year 1826 given in Saunders's statement is incorrect. Perhaps Saunders was simply wrong, or there's the possibility that an 8 in the written statement was misread as a 6 (I know that sounds lame, but it can't be denied as a possibility). Anyhow, re-reading Saunders's statement again with 1828 instead of 1826 seems to fit well with what we already know (or think we know), and I propose the following Chronology:
- Oliver teaches at the Stafford School in the 1828-29 term.
- Oliver goes to write for Joseph in the spring of 1829.
- By the beginning of the 1829-30 term, the dictated BoM manuscript has been completed. Joseph returns to Harmony in October 1829, and Oliver begins the 1829-30 term employed to teach at the Armington School.
- After a very brief time, it is decided that Oliver should no longer teach but devote himself to the preparation of the printers manuscript. So he again boards with the Smiths, and there he works on the printers manuscript. (This activity may be what Saunders spoke of as the writing of the BoM in Manchester.)
The only difference between my chronology and what we commonly hear about Oliver is that I believe Saunders is correct about Oliver teaching for a brief stint at the Armington School, so I have that as part of my chronology. Dates and years can be hard to remember correctly, so I can see confusing 1826 and 1828 when giving a statement 60 years later, but simply knowing that he sat in a class room with Oliver as his teacher and that Oliver ditched out early from the term is a memory I think Saunders would be less likely to confuse.
I still think Oliver's activities prior to the 1828-29 school term in Manchester are likely very important to understanding BoM origins. I'm just not convinced by this particular claim that puts Oliver as the teacher in the Smith's school as early as 1826.
There is a separate piece of evidence that may tell us something about Oliver's teaching career. If you have Vogel's "Early Mormon Documents (vol. 5)", go to page 287 and read the letter from Lee Yost to Diedrich Willers, Jr. (1897). Yost says Oliver Cowdery was a teacher in Fayette sometime prior to Smith's arrival there (along with some other strange tales about Oliver's activities). If Yost is at least correct about Oliver being a teacher there, that could be how he and the Whitmers were first acquainted. Perhaps Oliver had taught school in Fayette in the 1827-28 term or earlier. Other clues as to Oliver's whereabouts in the 1826-28 time frame are rare. We have his name appearing here: http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/NY/miscNYS0.htm#110727
We also have a statement from David Whitmer which places Oliver in Palmyra in 1828 prior to his boarding with the Smiths, and which suggests that Oliver had indeed been acquainted with the Smiths prior to the school term: http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/MO/Miss1881.htm#060581
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