The Book of Mormon was published
On this day · 26 March 1830
In 1830, a small-town New York print shop put 5,000 copies of a new American scripture on sale for the first time.
On March 26, 1830, a Palmyra, New York newspaper, the Wayne Sentinel, ran an advertisement reprinting a book’s title page and announcing it was “now for sale, wholesale and retail.” The book was the Book of Mormon, and that notice marks the day it first went on sale — the founding scripture of what became the Latter Day Saint movement.
The work was the project of Joseph Smith, who said he had translated it from ancient golden plates. Printing it was an industrial feat for a frontier town: printer Egbert B. Grandin set, ran off, and bound 5,000 copies, an enormous run at the time. The roughly $3,000 cost was secured against the farm of early supporter Martin Harris.
Less than two weeks later, on April 6, 1830, Smith formally organized his church.
Copies sold from Grandin’s bookstore for between $1.25 and $1.75. From those first volumes grew a faith that today counts millions of adherents worldwide.
Sources & references
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