The traditional date
and place for the incorporation of the Church of Christ, later renamed The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is April 6, 1830, in Fayette, New
York. Because no documents from 1830 attesting this event have survived, some writers
have suggested that no such legal organization ever occurred. (Nathan
B. Oman, Law and the Restoration: Law and Latter-day Saint History [Salt
Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2024], 103)
See, e.g., David Keith Stott, “Organizing the Church as a
Religious Association in 1830,” in Sustaining the Law: Joseph Smith’s Legal
Encounters, ed. Gordon A. Madsen, Jeffrey N. Walker, and John W. Welch
(Provo: BYU Studies, 2014), 113-40; H. Michael Marquardt, “An Appraisal of
Manchester as Location for the Organization of the Church,” Sunstone,
February 1992. According to Marquardt, no legal organization was attempted in
New York and the alleged incorporation was a later invention designed to fool
creditors in Ohio. However, Marquardt, who is not a lawyer, fails to explain
how an earlier Church incorporation would have frustrated collection efforts
against the Church or Church officers in Ohio. Nor does his article point to
any legal proceedings in Ohio in which the New York incorporation was invoked
to shield Latter-day Saint debtors, although there were numerous collection
actions brought against Joseph Smith in the wake of the failure of the Kirtland
Safety Society. (Ibid., 103 n. 25)
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