This month Seekers and Scholars brings together representatives from two separate documentary editing projects: the Joseph Smith Papers and the Mary Baker Eddy Papers. Our guests talk together about their work—and why making the papers of these religious leaders available online is a groundbreaking and multi-dimensioned endeavor, requiring many years of careful and conscientious attention. Smith and Eddy are best known for founding new American religious movements in the nineteenth century: for Smith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and for Eddy, the Church of Christ, Scientist. While the trajectory of their lives—as well as the doctrines of the churches they founded—differ in many ways, our guests find that the issues involved in representing their documentary history share much in common. They talk about the richness of the materials they are able to work with and how mundane documents such as financial records can at the same time tell a bigger story—perhaps one of a leader’s generosity, or of the growing popularity of their teachings. For scholars, items of this nature enrich the historical landscape, from which to research and write about these figures in potentially fuller and more nuanced ways; for contemporary adherents of these faiths, they offer pathways to deeper and illuminating connections with their religious heritage.
Access more on this topic:
- View the Joseph Smith Papers
- View the Mary Baker Eddy Papers
- From the [Mary Baker Eddy] Papers: How we do our work
- Podcast: Women’s voices in Mormon and Christian Science history—commonalities/differences
- Podcast: Creating online archives at The Mary Baker Eddy Library
Spencer W. McBride, PhD, is Associate Managing Historian of the Joseph Smith Papers. He is the author of multiple books, including Pulpit and Nation (University of Virginia Press, 2016), Contingent Citizens (Cornell University Press, 2020), Joseph Smith for President (Oxford University Press, 2021), and New York’s Burned-over District (Cornell University Press, 2023). His writing on the role of religion in American political culture has appeared in publications such as the Deseret News and the Washington Post.
Elizabeth Kuehn is Lead Historian for the Financial Records Series of the Joseph Smith Papers. Since 2013 she has worked as a documentary editor and historian on the Joseph Smith Papers Project. She is a co-editor of four documentary editions of the Papers: Documents Volume 5, Documents Volume 6, Documents Volume 10, and Documents Volume 15. Kuehn’s research has focused on Latter-day Saint women’s history, the Latter-day Saint communities in Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo, Illinois, and on the financial records of Joseph Smith. She has worked to bring greater inclusion of women and representation of their experiences to the Joseph Smith Papers Project. She received her bachelor of arts in history from Arizona State University and her masters of arts in history from Purdue University. She entered a doctoral program in history at the University of California, Irvine, and became a PhD candidate there in 2011.
Bronwen Arthur joined the Mary Baker Eddy Papers team in 2016. Before that, she worked as a researcher at the Library and held several positions with The Christian Science Publishing Society. As Associate Editor, she does “a little bit of everything” to ensure that the work of transcribing, annotating, and publishing the Papers runs smoothly. She particularly enjoys sharing new findings through research articles, email updates, social media posts, and podcasts. Arthur has a master’s in political science from the University of Queensland. She participated in the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents in 2018 and has presented about the Mary Baker Eddy Papers on several occasions at the Association for Documentary Editing (ADE) annual conference. She currently serves on the ADE’s communications committee.
Collage images: Photo of Mary Baker Eddy, c. 1892–1908, P00060; Screenshot of Asa Gilbert Eddy’s biography on the Mary Baker Eddy Papers website with photograph, c. 1850–1860, LSC006; Eddy to Caroline A. Fifield, January 8, 1879, L14257; Revised Plat of the City of Zion, c. Aug. 1833, by Frederick G. Williams, and screenshot of “Jackson County, Missouri” annotation on the Joseph Smith Papers website, © By Intellectual Reserve, Inc.; Portrait of Joseph Smith, n.d., Danquart Anthon Weggeland. Guest headshots used by permission.
