Joseph Smith’s First Vision — 1835 contemporaneous recountings

These three records all recount the same specific miraculous occurrence: Joseph Smith’s First Vision (the 1820 visitation in the Sacred Grove) as told by the Prophet to listeners in 1835 and subsequently recorded or recalled. Together they preserve multiple contemporaneous retellings and early documentary traces.

- Joseph Curtis recalled hearing Joseph Smith relate the First Vision during the Prophet’s 1835 visit to Pontiac, Michigan. That visit included Joseph Smith Sr., Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris and produced a widely noted meeting in which Smith explained why he had not immediately organized the Church after the initial heavenly visitation.

- Robert Matthias (also called Matthias the Prophet) visited Kirtland in November 1835; on November 9, 1835 Joseph Smith recounted the First Vision to Matthias. That conversation was entered in Joseph Smith’s journal by scribe Warren Parrish and later corroborated by George W. Robinson. This entry is one of the earliest written accounts of the First Vision.

- John Alger later (as an elderly man) testified that, as a small boy living near the Smith family in Kirtland, he heard Joseph Smith relate the Sacred Grove vision at the home of Joseph Smith Sr. Alger’s 1893 testimony was recorded by Charles Lowell Walker at a Fast Meeting on February 2, 1893 and preserves an intimate physical detail from the Prophet’s telling.

The merged account strings together these recollections and documentary notes to show multiple 1835 listeners and recorders of Joseph Smith’s retelling of his 1820 vision.