Antedatings of "Mormon" and "Mormonism" (Corrected Posting)

[Shapiro, Fred]

(Note that newspaper database searches yield 1830 citations for "Book of Mormon.")



Mormon, n. (OED 1833)

1831 _Observer and Telegraph_ (Hudson, Ohio) 7 July (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)  A young Prophetess, who is but eleven years of age, and much celebrated among the Mormons, informed her audience, that she had lately had a _vision_.

Mormon, adj. (OED 1833)

1831 _Observer and Telegraph_ (Hudson, Ohio) 24 Feb. (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)  Where shall we look for its commencement [the commencement of their baptism]?  Evidently, as they will themselves acknowledge, when [Joseph] Smith commenced with the Morman dispensation.

1831 _Daily National Journal_ (Washington, D.C.) 30 Mar. (America's Historical Newspapers)  The Editor of the Painsville Ohio Gazette says: -- _Martin Harris_, one of the original Mormon prophets, arrived in the village last Saturday, on his way to the 'Holy Land.'

Mormonism (OED July 1831)

1831 _Observer and Telegraph_ (Hudson, Ohio) 24 Feb. (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)  (heading) Mormonism.

Fred Shapiro

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