The history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began in 1820 with Joseph Smith's First Vision in western New York. Formally organized in 1830 following the publication of the Book of Mormon, the faith survived severe persecution in the Midwest before migrating west to the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847.
Palmyra and the First Vision: Roots of Mormon Church History
The origins of Mormon church history unfolded during the intense religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening. In the early nineteenth century, western New York was known as the "burned-over district" because successive waves of revivalist preachers competed fiercely for converts among Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist societies.
In 1820, in Manchester near Palmyra, fourteen-year-old Joseph Smith Jr. was troubled by sharp divisions among competing denominations. Seeking clarity, Smith read the Epistle of James in the New Testament: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him" (James 1:5). Seeking an answer, the young farm boy retired to a quiet grove of trees near his family home to pray aloud for the first time.
According to Smith's account, while praying in what is now venerated as the Sacred Grove, he saw a pillar of light descending from heaven. Within the light, he saw two personages standing above him in the air, whose brightness and glory defied description. One spoke to him, calling him by name and pointing to the other: "This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" When Smith asked which denomination he should join, the Savior instructed him to join none, declaring that their creeds were an abomination and their professors drew near with their lips while their hearts were far from God. This foundational event, known as the First Vision, marked the opening chapter of the Restoration, proclaiming that Christ's original authority and gospel would be restored to earth through a modern prophet.
The Book of Mormon and Organization in 1830
Three years later, in September 1823, Joseph Smith reported being visited by an angelic messenger named Moroni. The angel revealed that an ancient record inscribed on golden plates was buried in a nearby hill called Cumorah. The plates contained an account of ancient peoples who inhabited the Americas between 600 BC and 400 AD, tracing families who fled Jerusalem prior to the Babylonian exile. The spiritual pinnacle of the record was the personal appearance and ministry of the resurrected Jesus Christ to these ancient American inhabitants following His crucifixion.
In 1827, Smith obtained the plates along with prophetic interpreters known as the Urim and Thummim. Over the next two years, working primarily with schoolteacher Oliver Cowdery as scribe, Smith translated the ancient reformed Egyptian characters through what he described as the gift and power of God. The translation was verified by two groups of witnesses: the Three Witnesses (Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris), who testified that an angel showed them the plates, and the Eight Witnesses, who handled the physical leaves. In March 1830, printer Egbert B. Grandin in Palmyra published the first five thousand copies of the Book of Mormon, which the church reveres alongside the Bible as a second witness for the divinity of Jesus Christ.
On April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Hyrum Smith, Peter Whitmer Jr., David Whitmer, and Samuel Smith met at the home of Peter Whitmer Sr. in Fayette, New York, to legally organize the Church of Christ. The young church began ordaining elders, baptizing converts by immersion, and sending missionaries westward into Ohio and Missouri, spreading the core teachings of what Latter-day Saints believe.
The Gathering to Kirtland, Missouri, and Nauvoo
As converts entered the church, Joseph Smith introduced the principle of the "Gathering," directing believers to assemble geographically to build the city of Zion in preparation for the Second Coming. This gathering sparked rapid community growth but also provoked hostility from established frontier settlers.
Between 1831 and 1838, the church established dual centers. In Kirtland, Ohio, believers constructed the movement's first temple, dedicated in March 1836 amid spiritual manifestations. In Kirtland, Smith organized the governing quorums of the church. However, national economic panics, internal dissension, and the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society banking institution in 1837 ignited severe apostasy, forcing loyal members to flee Ohio.
Meanwhile, in western Missouri, Smith had designated Independence in Jackson County as the future New Jerusalem. Non-Mormon settlers grew alarmed by the rapid influx of northern anti-slavery Saints, their unified voting patterns, and their religious claims. In 1833, armed mobs drove the Mormons from Jackson County. Tensions erupted into violence during the 1838 Mormon War, culminating in Missouri Governor Lilburn W. Boggs issuing Executive Order 44, known as the "Extermination Order." The decree authorized the militia to treat Mormons as enemies and drive them from the state. Following the Haun's Mill massacre, in which seventeen Mormons were killed, Joseph Smith and other leaders were imprisoned through the winter of 183–839 in Liberty Jail.
Escaping Missouri in early 1839, the displaced Saints found refuge across the Mississippi River in Illinois. Purchasing swampy land at Commerce, they drained the marshes and constructed the city of Nauvoo, meaning "The City Beautiful." Within five years, Nauvoo grew into one of the largest municipalities in Illinois, rivaling Chicago. The Illinois legislature granted Nauvoo a liberal city charter authorizing a municipal court and a private militia known as the Nauvoo Legion. In Nauvoo, Smith introduced advanced doctrines, including baptism for the dead, eternal family sealings, temple endowment ceremonies, and the private practice of plural marriage.
These developments stirred fierce opposition from anti-Mormon factions in Hancock County. In June 1844, when the Nauvoo city council ordered the destruction of the press of the dissident Nauvoo Expositor newspaper, Smith was charged with riot and treason. Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum surrendered to authorities at Carthage, Illinois, under a pledge of protection from Governor Thomas Ford. On June 27, 1844, an armed mob of over one hundred men with blackened faces stormed Carthage Jail, shooting and killing both Joseph and Hyrum Smith. The prophet died at the age of thirty-eight.
The Succession Crisis and the Western Trek
The martyrdom plunged the church into an immediate leadership crisis. Several claimants stepped forward to lead the community. Sidney Rigdon, the sole surviving counselor in the First Presidency, proposed that he act as guardian. In Pennsylvania and the Midwest, other factions emerged, including followers of James Strang and a Midwestern contingent centered around Smith's widow, Emma Smith, and his son Joseph Smith III, which later organized as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ.
However, at a meeting in Nauvoo in August 1844, the majority of church members accepted the authority of Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. By late 1845, mob violence resumed, with armed groups burning outlying farms. In February 1846, under freezing winter conditions, Young began evacuating thousands of Saints across the frozen Mississippi River into Iowa. Setting up temporary camps, the main body established Winter Quarters on the Missouri River near present-day Omaha, Nebraska.
In April 1847, Brigham Young led a vanguard company of 148 pioneers west along the north bank of the Platte River, forging the Mormon Pioneer Trail. On July 24, 1847, looking down into the Salt Lake Valley from the mouth of Emigration Canyon, Brigham Young declared, "This is the right place. Drive on." Over the next two decades, approximately 70,000 pioneer convert—ncluding thousands of impoverished European converts pulling two-wheeled handcart—alked across the plains to settle the Intermountain West.
Colonizing the Great Basin, Statehood, and the 1890 Manifesto
Under Brigham Young's administrative leadership, the Latter-day Saints colonized the Great Basin, founding Salt Lake City and establishing more than three hundred planned settlements stretching from southern Idaho and Wyoming through Utah to Nevada and Arizona. Young instituted cooperative irrigation networks, public granaries, and community cooperatives to ensure survival in the arid desert.
Isolation, however, proved temporary. Following the Mexican-American War in 1848, the Great Basin came under United States sovereignty. Tension between federal officials and church leaders erupted into the Utah War of 185–858, when President James Buchanan sent federal troops to install a non-Mormon territorial governor. This tense climate contributed to the Mountain Meadows Massacre in southern Utah in September 1857, where local militia and allied Paiutes murdered approximately 120 emigrants traveling to California.
The central point of conflict between the church and the federal government remained the practice of plural marriage (polygamy), which church leaders had publicly acknowledged in 1852. Throughout the 1880s, the United States Congress passed aggressive antipolygamy legislation, including the Edmunds Act of 1882 and the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887. These statutes disenfranchised polygamists, jailed church leaders, dissolved the church's legal corporation, and authorized federal marshals to confiscate church property, including temples.
Faced with institutional dissolution, Church President Wilford Woodruff issued the 1890 Manifesto, officially announcing that the church had ceased contracting new plural marriages and advising members to obey civil law. A Second Manifesto issued in 1904 imposed excommunication on any member entering plural marriage anywhere in the world. With the resolution of the polygamy controversy, Utah was admitted to the Union as the forty-fifth state on January 4, 1896, marking the integration of Latter-day Saints into the broader American cultural fabric and the wider family tree of Christian denominations.
Global Expansion and Statistical Growth
Throughout the twentieth century, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shifted from gathering members to Utah to encouraging converts to build up the church in their native homelands. This transformation was propelled by an extensive full-time missionary program. Tens of thousands of young elders, sister missionaries, and retired couples volunteer at their own expense to serve sixteen to twenty-four month proselytizing and humanitarian missions worldwide.
Scholars analyzing the history of Mormonism note that this missionary engine produced remarkable growth across the globe. According to official statistical reports presented by the First Presidency at the April 2024 General Conference (documenting figures through December 31, 2023), total worldwide membership reached 17,255,394 across more than 160 nations and territories. These members gather in 31,490 organized congregations worldwide. Notably, more than half of all church members now reside outside the United States, with major concentrations in Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, Peru, and across West Africa.
This global expansion is physically visible in the rapid construction of sacred temples. Unlike standard meetinghouses used for weekly Sunday worship, temples are reserved for sacred ordinances such as eternal marriages and proxy baptisms for ancestors. The church currently operates, has under construction, or has announced more than 330 temples across every inhabited continent. To understand how meetinghouses differ from these monumental structures, explore our analysis of Latter-day Saint temples and meetinghouses, and learn how local congregations operate in our guide on Latter-day Saint wards and stakes.
The 2018 Name Emphasis and Modern Identity
In August 2018, Church President Russell M. Nelson announced a major initiative emphasizing the full, divinely revealed name of the faith: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. President Nelson emphasized that the Savior Himself commanded this name in modern revelation (Doctrine and Covenants 115:4): "For thus shall my church be called in the last days, even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."
President Nelson explained that using informal nicknames such as the "Mormon Church," "Mormonism," or the "LDS Church" inadvertently obscures the central place of Jesus Christ in the faith's theology and mission. While acknowledging that the Book of Mormon remains a foundational scripture, church leadership directed that members and outside media refer to the church by its formal name or use terms such as "the Church of Jesus Christ" and "Latter-day Saints." Following this directive, the church updated its global web domains, official social media handles, and historical entities, including renaming the famed Mormon Tabernacle Choir to The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.
Visiting a Latter-day Saint Meetinghouse Today
Today, visitors who walk into a local Latter-day Saint meetinghouse on Sunday encounter an active, lay-led community. Worship begins with the main sacrament meeting, which centers on partaking of bread and water in remembrance of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, accompanied by hymns, prayers, and sermons delivered by regular congregation members rather than professional clergy.
If you are looking for a local congregation in your neighborhood, browse our national directory of Latter-day Saint churches and examine regional membership patterns across Latter-day Saints by state. If you are planning to attend Sunday services, our practical guide to what to expect at a Latter-day Saints service provides helpful answers regarding dress, seating, and worship customs.