An independent historical research project

History of the Churchand Its Scattering

The leadership, the covenants, the gathering — and the succession crisis that split the movement after 1844.

Explore the recordThe central question

Six connected tools · 1830–1844

Geography

Interactive Migration Map

Where the Saints — and the rival successions — gathered and scattered, from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois and beyond.

Open the map → Leadership

Leadership Structure Timeline

Every presiding office as a lane, every tenure colored by how it ended — the collapse of 1838 and the succession that divided after 1844.

Open the timeline → The text

Conditional Covenants in the D&C

A chronological catalog of the promises and their conditions — obligation, blessing, curse, and the verdict the text itself renders.

Open the catalog → The people

Early Church Figures

A searchable roster of 118 people named in a revelation or holding a role, 1830–1844 — origins, offices, and how each story ended.

Open the roster → The record

When the Record Was Written

Every source for Nauvoo-era plural marriage, 1830–1844, graded by when it was actually written — and the distance between an alleged event and the paper that attests it.

Open the record → The killing

Two Minutes at Carthage

The martyrdom as the church has told it, set out at its strongest — then measured against a decade of forensic replication and archival checking.

Open the assessment →

What ties them together

The Doctrine and Covenants repeatedly frames the restoration's central blessings — protection, an endowment of power, an inheritance in Zion, even that "the gates of hell shall not prevail" — as conditional. In several sections the revelations themselves render a verdict that the conditions were not met (D&C 84, 101/105, 104), and D&C 124 sets the sharpest untested condition of all: "rejected as a church" if the Nauvoo appointment is not kept.

When Joseph Smith was killed in 1844, that unresolved thread met a genuine succession crisis: rival claimants, and a single movement that divided into several enduring factions. The five tools here let you follow the thread through the text (the covenants), the people (the roster), the offices (the timeline), the places (the map), and the documents themselves (the plural-marriage record, graded by date of writing) — and watch where a single church became many.

On stance. These materials are built to test the question, not to assume its answer. Whether the record shows a church that fell, one that was chastened, or one that simply scattered into rival successions is left for the reader — faithful and critical readings of the same verses both exist. Dates, itineraries, and figures are drawn from the sources below and are approximate where flagged.
Questions, corrections and contributions

Feedback is welcome — corrections most of all

This is an open research project and it improves by being checked. If something here is wrong, or a grade is too generous, or you know of a document that has not been examined, that is worth more than agreement.

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Especially useful:

Questions are welcome too, including from people who disagree with the premise entirely.

Independent research project. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is an independent, non-commercial study. Church names and marks are the property of Intellectual Reserve, Inc. and are used here only descriptively. Doctrine and Covenants passages quoted are in the public domain; all analysis and visualizations are the author's own.